M. N. D. III. 1.

* Compare the sounds, etc., before the deaths of Duncan, Macbeth, and Julius Caesar.
t " It was the owl that shrieked, that fearful bellman." Macb. II. 3.
J The following is reprinted from an article published in Shake- speariana, April, 1884.
228 FRANCIS BACON
To begin with Puck's well-known speech. Oberon desires him to fetch a certain herb and to return " ere Leviathan can swim a league." Puck answers :
" I'll put a girdle round about the earth In forty minutes.11
Bacon, in studying the winds, made many inquiries as to the parts of the globe in which the winds chiefly occur, and where they blow with the greatest swiftness. He finds this to be the case at the tropics. " In Peru, and divers parts of the West Indies, though under the line, the heats are not so intolerable as they are in Barbary and the skirts of the torrid zone. The causes are, first, the great breezes which the motion of the air in great circles, such as are under the girdle of the earth, pro- duceth." Puck, then, is the ministering wind, Oberon's familiar or aerial spirit, who will, at his bidding, sweep round the girdle of the earth, where, according to Bacon's observations, winds travel with the greatest speed.
Puck is "one of the free winds which range over a wide space." We know this, because he calls himself* "a merry wanderer of the night," and the free winds, Bacon tells us, " last, generally, for twenty-four hours ; " it is the " smaller and lighter winds " which " generally rise in the morning and fall at sunset." f
The first scene in which the fairies enter suggests the airi- ness of the elves, the " rare " and wind-like nature which Bacon says resembles fame, "for the winds penetrate and bluster everywhere." The fairies here seem to be " the free winds blowing from every quarter," and the first speaker " an attendant wind," whose duty it is "to collect clouds," and which are, according to the " History," of a moist nature.
Puck. How now, spirit, whither wander you ? Fai. Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough brier, Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire, I do wander everywhere, Swifter than the moon's sphere ;
* M. N. D. II. 1. t History of Winds. Spedding, Works, V. 143.
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 229
And I serve the fairy queen, To dew her orbs upon the green. The cowslips tall her pensioners be : In their gold coats spots you see ; Those be rubies, fairy favours, In those freckles live their savours : I must go seek some dewdrops here, And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.
There is something infinitely pleasurable in tracing in the speeches of the fairies which follow all the details, as to their nature, avocations, and abode, of the spirits of fire, air, earth, and water, which are here so exquisitely presented to us —
The fairies who meet in groves and green — By fountain clear or spangled starlight sheen.
And although the more popular idea of fairies, because (so we think) it was first so presented in this play, is the idea of "icood nymphs" "terrestrial spirits," we still find the fairies of the hill and dale, of forest and mead, mixed up and consorting with lighter winds and breezes which spring up beside rivers and running water. Titania upbraids Oberon because
Never, since the middle summer's spring,
Met we on hill, in dale, forest or mead,
By paved fountain or by rushy brook,
Or on the beached margent of the sea,
To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,
But with thy brawls thou hast disturb'd our sport.]
In a speech of nearly forty lines, she continues to pour out a string of Baconian observations on the "contagious" effects of fogs, sucked up from the sea by the revengeful winds ; of the " rotting " produced by warm, damp winds (which, Bacon adds, are usually from the south or south-west) ; of the rheumatic dis- orders and changes of season and consequent "distempera- tures" resulting from inundatians, which have "drowned " the fields and filled the nine men's morris with the unwholesome "mud" which Bacon's soul abhorred. The influence of the moon is also noted here, as in the scientific notes :
11 The moon, the governess of floods, Pale in her anger, washes all the air.11
And the effect which she produces, of raising the tides and so of causing inundations and destruction of vegetation, is as clearly
230 FRANCIS BACON
marked as in the notes on the Ebb and Flow of the Sea, or in the Sylva Sylvarum.
" The periodical winds," says Bacon, " do not blow at night, but get up the third hour after sunrise. All free winds, likewise, blow oftener and more violently in the morning and evening than at noon and night." So, when midnight approaches, Oberon and his train retire, " following darkness like a dream," but with commands to " meet me all by break of day."
In the last scene of this charmingly spiritual piece, Puck again declares himself the true child of Bacon's imagination. In describing the frolics of the fairies (perhaps the " frivolous winds," which he describes as " performing dances, of which it would be pleasing to know the order "), Puck speaks of sprites who are let forth to " glide about " :
"... fairies that do run By the triple Hecate's team, From the presence of the sun."
For, Bacon says, uthe winds cease at noon." Of himself,
Puck says :
" I am sent with broom before, To sweep the dust behind the door."
For as we again read in the History of Winds: "To the earth, which is the seat and habitation of men, the winds serve for brooms, sweeping and cleansing both it and the air itself."
The poet, then, according to these observations, derived his lovely conceptions of the fairies, in the first instance, from his careful but suggestive notes on the zephyrs and breezes, of whom he makes Puck chief or swiftest. To many other airy nothings he gives neither a local habitation nor a name. Yet we feel sure that they are the vital spirits of nature — " water- nymphs conversant with waters and rivers," such as Oberon has employed to " cause inundations " — or they are terrestrial spirits, like the Hobgoblins and Robin Goodfellows of the Anatomy, and who do the same domestic drudgery, and play the same pranks that are there described in similar detail, bringing, in spite of their fun and mischief, good luck to the houses which they frequent.
Fat. Either I mistake your shape and making quite, Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite Call'd Robin Goodfellow : are not you he
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 231
That frights the maidens of the villagery ; Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern And bootless make the breathless housewife churn ; And sometimes make the drink to bear no barm ; Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm ? Those that Hobgoblin call you and sweet Puck, You do their work, and they shall have good luck : Are not you he ?
Puck. Thou speak'st aright ;
I am that merry wanderer of the night. I jest to Oberon and make him smile When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile, Neighing in likeness of a filly foal ; And sometime lurk I in a gossip's bowl, In very likeness of a roasted crab, And when she drinks, against her lips I bob, And on her wither'd dewlap pour the ale. The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale, Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me ; Then slip I from her, then down topples she, And " tailor " cries and falls into a cough ; And then the whole quire hold their hips and laugh, And waxen in their mirth, and neeze and swear. A merrier hour was never wasted there.*
" Sir Fulke Grevillo . . . would say merrily of himself : that he was like Robin Goodfellow, for when the maids spilt the milk-pans, or kept any racket, they would lay it on Robin ; so, what tales the ladies about the Queen told her, or other bad offices they had, they would put it upon him."|
There are four fairies besides Puck, who, somewhat less ethereal than the rest, specially connect themselves with the studies of the Natural Philosopher, and appear to be the very coinage of his brain. In recalling the flowers which perfume the air most delightfully in gardens, when crushed or trodden on, Bacon begins with " bean flowers " but checks himself, saying that they are not for gardens, because they are field flowers." Elsewhere he says that "the daintiest smells of flowers are those plants whose leaves smell not, as the bean flower." He suggests "the setting of whole alleys of burnet, wild thyme, and mint, to have pleasure when you walk and tread/' adding, in another place, that " odours are very good
* Midsummer Night's Dream, t Bacon's Apophthegms, 235 ; Spedding, Works, VII. 158.
232 FRANCIS BACON
to comfort the heart,'' and the smell of leaves falling and of bean blossoms supplies a good coolness to the spirits. Thus, whilst commending the sweetness of
" A bank whereon the wild thyme grows,"
bean flowers are, in his estimation, sweeter still, and in the fairy " Peaseblossom " of the play we seem to recognise the " bean flower," sweetest of perfumes amongst field flowers, and whose mission is to supply a " cooling'' and "comforting" odour to the bank whereon the Fairy Queen will repose. " Mustard-seed " is a brisk ministering spirit of the fairy court, for "mustard," says Bacon, has in it "a quick spirit, ready to get up and spread."
" Where's Monsieur Mustard-seed ? Ready . . . What's your will ? "
Peaseblossom and Cobweb are also ready, but only the fiery and quick-spirited Mustard-seed is ready to get up and act.
Then Moth — be not appalled, delicate reader — Moth seems to be the winged product of Bacon's experiments touching living creatures bred of putrefaction. " For putrefaction is the work of the spirits of bodies, which ever are unquiet to get forth and congregate with the air" (the wind fairies), "and to enjoy the sunbeams." Titania is the sunbeam, the vivifying and all- cheering spirit of living things. Her name proclaims her nature. " Moths and butterflies," we are told, " quicken with heat, and revive easily, even when they seem dead, being brought near the sun." What, then, can be more fitting than that the soft, ephemeral white " Moth " should be found hovering or flitting about where Titania, the Sunbeam, is ?
Cobweb, or Gossamer, is another almost immaterial creature, " bred by dew and sun all over the ground. . . . Cobwebs are most seen where caterpillars abound, which breedeth {sic) by dew and leaves. They are a sign of dryness, . . . and come when the dry east winds have most blown." The ideas springing from these details, and woven into the "Dream," are as subtle as the Gossamer itself, and almost as difficult to handle without destroying their beauty. By means of clues offered by the simple names of attendants upon Titania, we may, if we will, follow, panting, the nimble bounds of the poet's fancy ; bend and twirl and light in unexpected
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 233
places, while he leads us a dance through the sciences — that " labyrinth," whose paths are " so subtle, intricate, and crossing each other, that they are only to be understoood and traced by the clue of experience."
We conjure up, perhaps faintly, the dream which he was dreaming of universal nature — the Oberon of the play* — of the nature upon which the zephyrs and soft winds wait, hasting to assist the operations of the Sunbeam, the life-giver. When the east winds have dried the banks, Cobweb overspreads them with his delicate covering to receive the Fairy Queen, and as she sleeps, her "spirits cooled," and her "heart comforted" by the perfumes which Peaseblossom scatters, Moth fans her with his noiseless wings, and Mustard-seed stands ready to spring up to obey her hest or know what is her will.
Those fairies were the "children of an idle brain" — idle con- sidering whose brain it was. Troubles light as a summer cloud, in comparison to the storms which broke over his later life, had lately passed away when that rare vision was dreamed. The pert and nimble spirit of mirth was again wide-awake. Francis Bacon's pretty device, The Masque of the Indian Boy, had lately been performed before the Queen ; his mind was full of thoughts such as pervade that little, courtly piece, when, in the glades and river-sceues of Twickenham, the poet, as we believe, on some hot summer's night, wrote his fairy story.
Things had changed when he set his pen to write Macbeth. " There's nothing either good or ill but thinking makes it so." The world and its joys had grown dark to Francis Bacon, and the very elements, the powers of nature, turned wild and gloomy in the distracted globe of his great mind.
The winds are no longer " frivolous," " dancing," " piping, and whistling to each other," "gamboling with golden locks," " playing with the sedges." They are now the powerful and portentous ministers of fate as well as of nature ; their realm is full of hurly-burly, fog and filthy air ; their nature, still spiritual, is no longer fairy-like, but witch-like and demoniacal
* Compare Oberon with Pan as described in the essay by Bacon and in the De Augmentis. The universal nature of things, which has its origin from confused matter ; the hairiness of his body representing the rays of things ; his control over the nature and fates of things — as Oberon, in the play, is seen to regulate the general course of events.
Q
234 FRANCIS BACON
The beneficent merry spirits have been transformed into the evil geniuses and hell-hags, whose mission is to confound unity, to lead men on to their destruction, to tumble all nature together, even till destruction sickens.
The witches of Macbeth have about them some points which distinguish them from all other beings of the kind with whom literature acquaints us. They seem to have been created in the poet's brain by a subtle blending or fusion of his lawyer's experience in trials for witchcraft — of " witches, inhabitants of earth " — with his scientific and metaphysical investigations and conceits as to the properties and " versions * of air, breath, and water ; of the " transmissions of spiritual species " ; of " the operations of sympathy in things which have been contiguous." Bacon's witches, inhabitants rather of the air and clouds than of the earth, partake (by sympathy with the elements to which they are "contiguous") of the virtues and characteristics of air, vapours, and exhalations. It was a recognised characteristic of witches, that they ride through the air generally on broom- sticks, and vanish, but the more poetical idea of their conversion, at pleasure, into the elements to which they are made kindred, is, we believe, only to be found in Macbeth.
In the few descriptive words of Macbeth and Banquo * the scientific doctrine of the convertibility of air, vapour, and water is clearly seen, and with it the poetical and very Baconian doctrine of the mutual influence of body and spirit. It is by sympathy that the witches can turn themselves into either form. Spirits they are, airy, or " pneumatic bodies, which partake both of an oily and watery substance, and which, being converted into a pneumatic substance, constitute a body composed, as it were, of air and flame, and combining the mysterious properties of both. Now, these bodies," continues Bacon, " are of the nature of breaths."
The witches vanish, and Banquo exclaims :
" The earth has bubbles as the water hath, And these are of them. Whither are they vanished ? "
Macbeth replies :
" Into the air : and what seemed corporal, melted As breath, into the wind.'"
* Macbeth I. 3, 79—82.
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 235
So, too, he describes to Lady Macbeth how, when he tried to question the witches :
" They made themselves air, into which they vanished."
There is in this line something singularly weird, super- natural, and poetic, drawp, as it surely is, and as Bacon tells us that all great sayings are drawn, from the very centre of the sciences.
The witches, in the first act, appear to be incarnations of air, in violent agitation or motion ; strong winds, accompanied by thunder and lightning, such as Bacon describes. In the third scene two witches, spirits of air, offer to help Hecate by the gift of a wind. They are more generous than the aerial spirits mentioned in the Anatomy, who "sell winds," and Hecate acknowledges their merit. " Thou art kind," she says, for she is busy raising tempest after the manner described by Bacon,* and an extra wind or so is not unacceptable.
In the same scene the weird sisters describe themselves as :
" Posters of the sea and land,"
just as, in the History of Winds, Bacon speaks of "clouds that drive fast" " winds traders in vapours," " winds that are itinerant"
It may be remembered that the aerial spirits were specially described in the Anatomy as causing tempests in which they tear oaks, fire steeples, cause sickness, shipwrecks, and inunda- tions. A similar description is given in the History of Winds and of the Management of Ships. " Winds are like great waves of the air. . . . They may blow down trees; . . . they may likewise overturn edifices; but the more solid structures they cannot destroy, unless accompanied by earth- quakes. Sometimes they hurl down avalanches from the mountains so as almost to bury the plains beneath them ; some- times they cause great inundations of water."
See how all these points are reproduced by Macbeth wThen he conjures the witches :
Macb. I conjure you, by that which you profess, Howe'er you come to know it, answer me :
* See Hist, of Winds, Sylva Sylvarum, and the passage from the Anatomy, quoted ante.
236 FRANCIS BACON
Though you untie the winds and let them fight
Against the churches ; though the yesty waves
Confound and swallow navigation up :
Though bladed corn be lodged and trees blown down ;
Though castles topple on their warders' heads ;
Though palaces and pyramids do slope
Their heads to their foundations ; though the treasure
Of nature's germens tumble altogether,
Even till destruction sicken ; answer me
To what I ask you *
The meetings of the witches in every case derive their picturesqueness and colour from Bacon's notes "on the meet- ings of the winds together, which, if the winds be strong, produce violent whirlwinds,'' and it is interesting to find that the hint for " the sound of battle in the air," and which is introduced as a portent in Julius Ccesar —
"The noise of battle hurtled in the air"t
(and which, by the way, is also included in the notes of the Anatomist — " Counterfeit armies in the air, strange noises, swords, etc.) — was originally taken from the poet Virgil, from whom, indeed, the idea of the meeting of the four witches, as of " the rushing together of the four winds" may have been taken.
" Virgil . . . was by no means ignorant of Natural Philosophy." " At once the winds rush forth, the east, and south, and south- west laden with storms." if
And again : " I have seen all the battles of the winds meet together in the air." §
In the Tempest much of the fun and sprightliness of the Midsummer Night's Dream peeps out again, and the "gross matter " of prosaic scientific notes is again vapourised into ideas as light as the airs of the enchanted isle of which the poet- philosopher wrote.
" Inquire," says the History, " into the nature of the winds, whether some are not free? . . . What do mountains con- tribute to them ? "
* Macb. IV. 1. f Jul- Cces. II. 2.
J iEneid I. 85, quoted in Hist, of Winds.
§ Georgics I. 318, and compare Macbeth II. 3, 55, 60.
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 237
Prospero says to Ariel : " Thou shalt be free as mountain winds.1''
" The poets," continues the History, " have feigned that the Kingdom of Sol was situated in subterranean dens and caverns, where the winds are imprisoned, and whence they xcere occa- sionally let loose. . . . The air icill submit to some compression. * . . At Aber Barry there is a rocky cliff filled with holes, to which if a man apply his ear, he will hear sounds and murmurs." In Potosi are vents for hot blasts.
Prospero reminds Ariel of his miserable condition as an imprisoned bird under the control of the witch Sycorax, and of how he had to submit to painful compression, " venting his groans " for a dozen years. He threatens further punishment if Ariel continues to murmur :
And, for thou wast a spirit too delicate
To act her earthy and abhorr'd commands,
Refusing her grand hests, she did confine thee,
By help of her more potent ministers
And in her most unmitigable rage,
Into a cloven pine ; within which rift
Imprison'd thou didst painfully remain
A dozen years ; within which space she died
And left thee there ; where thou didst \>ent thy groans
As fast as mill-wheels strike.
Thou best know'st What torment I did find thee in ; thy groans Did make wolves howl and penetrate the breasts Of ever angry bears : it was a torment To lay upon the damn'd, which Sycorax Could not again undo : it was mine art, When I arrived and heard thee, that made gape The pine and let thee out.
Ari. I thank thee, master.
Pr. If thou more murmur'st, I will rend an oak And peg thee in his knotty entrails till Thou hast howl'd away twelve winters.*
Sooner than undergo any further compression Ariel asks pardon, and promises to do his spiriting gently. Prospero then commands him to make a " version " of himself from
* Tempest I. 2.
238 FRANCIS BACON
air into water (a converse process to that performed by the
witches).
" Go, make thyself a nymph of the sea."
" No wonder," Bacon reflects, " that the nature of the winds is ranked amongst the things mysterious and concealed, when the power and nature of the air which the winds attend and serve is entirely unknown. . . . Inquire into the nature of the attendant winds, their community, etc." This mysterious and concealed characteristic of the winds is hinted when Ariel dis- guises himself, and appears as a harpy. " I and my fellows" he says, " are ministers of fate," incapable of injury, " invulner- able."
The winds have " a power of conveying spiritual species, that is, sounds, radiations, and the like ; " these Bacon would have inquired into. The excited imagination and uneasy conscience of Alonzo make him nervously impressionable, and able to recognise these spiritual sounds :
Alon. Oh, it is monstrous, monstrous !
Methought the billows spoke and told me of it ; The winds did sing it to me, and the thunder, That deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronounced The name of Prosper : it did bass my trespass.*
A passage which, in gloomier and more tragic language, is echoed in Macbeth :
And pity, like a naked new-born babe, Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, horsed Upon the sightless couriers of the air, Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, That tears shall drown the wind.t
The notes on the tremendous force of the winds are once more distilled into verse in the Tempest, where, also, the gentler winds are described " driving on the tides and currents, some- times propelling, and sometimes flying from one another, as if in sport" These winds, weak masters though they be, assist, Bacon says, in promoting an " agitation " and " collision " amongst the violent winds, and " drive them along in mad fury.1'
* Tempest III. 3.
t Macbeth I. 7. The last line seems to refer to Bacon's observation that " showers generally allay the winds, especially if they be stormy."
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 239
In other words, the tempest, raised by the attendant and minis- tering winds, is combined with an earthquake, over which the winds have no control, but which the magician has caused by his art.
See the lovely creation from these elements :
Pros. Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves, And ye that on the sands with printless foot Do chase the ebbing Neptune and do fly him When he comes back; you demi-puppets that By moonshine do the green-sour ringlets make, Whereof the ewe not bites, and you whose pastime Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice To hear the solemn curfew ; by whose aid, Weak masters though ye be, I have bedimm'd The noontide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds, And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault Set roaring war : to the dread rattling thunder Have I given fire and rifted Jove's stout oak With his own bolt ; the strong-based promontory Have I made shake, and by the spurs pluck'd up The pine and cedar : graves at my command Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let em forth By my so potent art.
These lines give us hints of Bacon's curious " Experiments Touching the Eudiments of Plants, of Excrescences,1' etc. " Moss," he says, " cometh of moisture," and is made of the sap of the tree " which is not so frank as to rise all the boughs, but tireth by the way and putteth out moss." * A quaint idea ! full of the Paracelsian notion of the spirits or souls of things, and very Baconian, too. Bacon thought that the winds had something to do with such growths, for trees are said to bear most moss that " stand bleak and upon the winds." Next to moss he speaks of mushrooms, which he associates with moss, as being " likewise an imperfect plant." Mushrooms have two strange properties ; " the one is, they yield so delicious a meat " (therefore they are deserving of the fairies' trouble in growing them) ; " the other, that they come up so hastily, and yet they are unsown " (and how could that be except they were sown by the fairies ?). Like moss, " they come of moisture, and are windy, but the xoindiness is not sharp and griping ; " they are, therefore,
* Nat. Hist. VI. 540.
240 FRANCIS BACON
unlike " the green-sour ringlets " which the fairies make in the moonlight (where, Bacon says, nothing will ripen), and which even the sheep will not eat, though sheep love mushrooms.
The wind-fairies " rejoice to hear the solemn curfew.'' This tells us that these are the south winds, " for the south wind is the attendant of the night; it rises in the night, and bloics stronger." *
The south and west winds, too, are " warm and moist, favourable to plants, flowers, and all vegetation ; " hence the mushrooms spring up quickly under their influence.
But the north winds are " more potent ministers ; " with them occur " thunder, lightning, and tornadoes, accompanied with cold and hail." f They are " unfriendly" and even destructive to vegetable life, and either " bind the floioer on the opening of it, or shake it off." J
" The tyrannous breathing of the north Shakes all our buds from growing." §
" Storms," continues our observant naturalist, " when attended with clouds and fog, are very dangerous at sea." Prospero, therefore, to make his tempest the more terrible, " bedims the noontide sun," before calling forth the winds and the thunder. ||
" The anniversary north winds " come " from the frozen sea, and the region about the Arctic Circle, where the ice and snow are not melted till the summer is far advanced." Prospero taunts
Ariel :
" Thou think'st it much to tread the ooze Of the salt deep,
To run upon the sharp wind of the north When it is bak'd with frost."
The last lines seem to be suggested by the Latin entry in the Promus (No. 1367) : " Frigus adurit." The idea is repeated in Hamlet :
" Frost itself as actively doth burn" ^ The philosophic poet does not forget to allude to the effects of
* Hist. Winds, 1, 2, 10, 12, etc., qualities and powers.
t Comp. Macb. 1. 1, 2. Ham. V. 2, 97.
t lb. 21, 24. § Cymb. I. 4.
|| Compare Macb. I. 1, of the witches' storms.
f Hamlet, III. 4.
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 241
" warm winds and moist airs in inducing putrefaction," and in " increasing pestilential diseases and catarrhs." Caliban's worst imprecation (which, by the way, personifies even dew in true Paracelsian style) is this :
"As wicked dew as e'er my mother brush'd With raven's'feather from unwholesome fen Drop on you both ! A southwest blow on ye And blister you all o'er."
Prospero is equal to the occasion, and answers him in kind •
" For this, be sure, thou shalt have cramps, Side stitches that shall pen thy breath up. . . . I'll rack thee with old cramps, Fill all thy bones with aches."*
Bacon's cogitations on winds, contagion, putrefaction, and the doctrines of the human body, of the biform figure of nature, and of the sensitive soul, are inextricably interwoven in the Shakespeare plays of the later period. It is not the intention of this book to enter deeply into anything ; the aim is to excite interest, even opposition, if that will promote study, and at least to encourage our younger readers to believe that all is not yet known on any of these subjects, and that vast fields of delightful and profitable research lie open for them to explore, delve into, and cultivate. But in order to do this, it is quite certain that the tool absolutely indispensable is a knowledge of Bacon's works — not only of those little pithy essays which embody all that the ordinary reader conceives as Bacon's writings, exclusive of " exploded science," and law tracts and speeches, too dull to be tackled. Let those who are of this mind take those very works and read them with the belief that they are the keys to all the great literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; the touchstones by which the authorship of other works may be tried ; sketches for finished pictures or condensed editions of more casual and discursive works of Bacon's early days. Let them think that even with regard to the Shake- speare plays only these little-read scientific works of Bacon are invaluable, explaining or elucidating, as they so often do, the
* Tempest, I. 2, and compare where Thersites curses Patroclus (Troilus and Cressida, V. 1), and where Marcius curses the Romans (Coriol. I. 4, 30, etc.).
242 FRANCIS BACON
meaning or original idea of obscure passages, and often enabling the commentator to trace the thought to some author of antiquity, or to some observation drawn from " nature's infinite book of secresy," in which, says the poet, " a little I can read."
The last scene in The Tempest shows us the philosopher returning from the " recreative " writing, which relieved the overflowing of a full brain, to the graver labours and con- templations which drew Bacon to the retirement of his " full poor cell." Play-time was over, and " these things are but toys."
" Our revels are now ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air ;
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep. Sir, I am vex'd ;
Bear with my weakness ; my old brain is troubled ;
Be not disturbed with my infirmity :
If you be pleased, retire into my cell
And there repose : a turn or two I'll walk,
To still my beating mind."
AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 243