CHAPTER XL

PARALLELS.

"For it is a rule of TrcuUtive Art* that whatsoever science is not con-
sonant to anticipations or presuppositions viust pray in aid of similitudes
and com]Mirisons " (Book VI., page 276, " Advancement of Learning ").

" For many forms of speaking are equal in signification which are different
in impression" (Book VI., page 211, "Advancement of Learning").

" Pro Verbis legis
Non est interpretatio, scd divinatio, qure recedit a litera :
Cum receditur a litera, judex transit in legislatorem.

Pro sententia legis.
Ex omnibus verbis est eliciendus sensus qui inter^n-etatur singula."

(" Advancement," Book II.)

" For, as the fable goeth of the basilisk, that if he see you first
you die for it; but if you sec him first, he dieth" ("Advance-
ment," Book II., xxxi. 9).

It is a basilisk unto mine eye,
Kills me to look on't.

(" Cymbeline," act ii. sc. 4, 107.)

"There is an ancient received tradition of the Salamander,

that it liveth in the fire, and hath force also to extinguish the

fire" (Exp. 860, " Natimil History ").

I have maintained that Salamander of yoiU'S with fire
Any time this two and thirty years.

("1 King Henry IV.," act iii. sc. 3.)

"Affliction only level those mole-hills of pride" ("Letter LXX.
to Lord Chief Justice Coke," 1702).

* The fact Bacon makes these remarks in connection with Tradition, which
he calls ' ' The Art of Delivery, or of expressing, and transferring those things
which are invented," is a significant hint of itself.

PARALLELS. 193

Tlie blind inole casts
Copjj'd liills towards heaven, to tell the earth is throng'd
By man's oppression.

("Pericles," act i. sc. 1.)

" But as for imitation, it is certain that there is in men and
other creatures a predisposition to imitate. We see how ready
apes and monkeys are to imitate all motions of man. And
besides you shall have imrrots that will not only imitate voices hut
laughing" ("Sylva Sylvarum," Cent. Ill, Exp. 236, 237).

Now by two-headed Janus,
Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time :
Some that will evermore peep through their eyes,
And laugh like Pari'ots at a bagpiper.

( ' ' Merchant of Venice, " act i. sc. 1. )
Imitari is nothing : so doth the hound his master, the Ajjc his Keeper.
(" Love's Labour's Lost," act iv. sc. 2.)

Cleopatra. Hast thou the pretty worm of Nilus there.
That kills and pains not?

("Antony and Cleopatra," act v. sc. 2.)

" The death that is most without pain, hath been noted to be upon
the taking of the potion of hemlock, which, in humanity, was the
form of execution of capital offenders in Athens. The poison of
the asp that Cleopatra used hath some affinity with it" ("Natui'al
History," Exp. 643, Cent. VII.).

" That the note of a thing chosen for Opinion, and not for truth,
is this, that if a man thought that what he doth should never
come to light, he would never have done it " (" Coloiu^s of Good
and Evil," 10).

A plague of Opinion, a man may wear it on both sides like a leather jerkin.
( ' ' Troilus and Crcssida. ")

This fool's gudgeon, this ojnnion.

("Merchant of Venice," act i. sc. 1.)

Be cured of this diseased ojnnion.

(" Winter's Tale," act i. sc. 2.)

" So in like manner, although our persons live in the view of
heaven, yet our spirits are included in the caves of our own com-

N

194

PARALLELS.

plexions and customs, which minister luito us infinite errors and
vain opinions, if they be not recalled to examination" ("Advance-
ment of Learning," Book II., p. 56).

"And fhe opinion of Epicurus, answerable to the same in
Heathenism who supposed the gods to be of human shape"
(" Advancement of Learning," Book IL, p. 56).

Casshts, You know that I held Epicurus strong,
And his opinion.

("Julius Ca'sar," act v. sc, 1.)

" The deformity of flattery is comical, but the damage tragical "
(Flattery, XXXVIIL, " Antitheta ").

How exactly this is reflected in " Timon of Athens," where the
flattery of his friends is comically transparent, the end being so
tragical !

" The first precept may be that whereof wc have admonished
already ; let the greater revolutions be retain'd ; the lesser
horoscopes and houses CAisheer'd" ("Advancement of Learning,"
1640, p. 149).

For naught hut provender, and when he's old crtsheer'd.

(" Othello," act i. sc. 1.)

"For it was both j^leasantly and wisely said by a nvuicio of
the Pope, returning from a certain nation where he served as
leiger" ("Advancement of Learning," Book IL, xxiii. 19).

Lord Angelo, having affairs to heaven,
Intends you for his swift aiuhassador,
Where you shall be an everlasting leiger.

(" Measure for Measure," act iii. sc. 1, 59.)

"The blessing of Judah and Issachar will never meet: That
the same people or nation should be both the Lion's JFhelp and
the ass between burdens " (" Greatness of Kingdoms").

Compare soothsayer's prediction (" Cymbeline," act v.) : —

When as a Lion's AVlielji, &c.

PARALLELS. 195

Good friend, for Jesus' sake, forbeare
To dig the dust enclosed here :
Blest be the man that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones.

(Shakespeare's Epitaph.)
Blest be the hearts that wish my sovereign well !
Curst be the soul that thinks her any wrong !

(Bacon's "Retired Courtier.")

One of Bacon's similes for nature is that of a vuluTne or book.
In the "De Augnientis" he writes of Aristotle's "Book of
Natiu-e " : " The world is a volume of God, a kind of Second
Scriptures, and as the words or terms of all languages in an
immense variety, are composed of a few simple letters, so all
the actions and powers of things, are formed by a few natures
and original elements of simple motions" ("Works," vol. v.,
p. 426). Again : " Heraclitus gave a just censure, saying
men sought wisdom in their own little worlds, and not in the
great and common Avorld : for they disdain to spell, and so by
degrees to read in the volume of God's works." The thoughtful
student may perhaps be inclined to think Bacon is hinting at
the " volume of Nature " of the so-called Shakespeare plays. It
is worthy notice, we find in "As You Like It," Nature identified
with a book —

Find tongues in trees, books * in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

("As You Like It.")
In nature's injinite look of secrecy,
A little I can read.

("Antony and Cleo}iatra," act i. sc. 2.)

The sympathies of the author of the plays for the Trojans rather
than the Greeks, is very marked in "Troilus and Cressida."

* This idea is entirely Rosicrucian. "All herbs, flowers, trees, and all the
fruits of the earth," says the author in his treatise on Signatures, "are books
and magic signs given us by the mercy of God" ("Signaturis Reruni Internis,"
Oswald Crollius, 1609). "If thou hast but leisure, run over the Alphabet of
Nature, examine every letter, Ivican every particiilar creature in her book —
what becomes of her grass, her corn, her herbs, her flowers?" (" Ccelum Terife ;
or the Magician's Heavenly Chaos," p. 128, Thomas Vaughan Waite).

196 PARALLELS.

Hector is the real hero, modest, and a great contrast to the proud
insulting Achilles, by whom he is killed when defenceless and
unarmed. Bacon shows a similar sympathy for ^neas, and
quotes the lines of Yii'gil —

At domus ^iicK cuiictis dominabitur oris
Et iiati iiatorum, et (|ui uascentur ab illis.

(" Proiihecies.")

This sympathy very likely is liorrowed from Virgil.

" A man may destroy the force of his words with his counten-
ance " ("Advancement of Learning," Book II., p. 78).

Fie treacherous hue, that will betray witli blushing
The close euacts and counsels of the heart.

("Titus Andronicus," act iv. sc. 2.)

" For I know Fame hath swift wings ; specially that vMch hath

black feathers " (Letter to Sir George Villiers, 19th Feh. 1615).

That thou are blam'd shall not be thy defect,

For slander's mark was ever yet the fair ;

The ornament of beauty is suspect,

A crow that flics in heaven's sweetest air. (Sonnets.)

" And there has insinuated into men's minds a still subtler error

— namely this, that art is conceiv'd to he a sort of addition to

nature" ("Advancement of Learning").

So over that art
Which you say adds to nature, is an art
That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry
A gentle scion to the wildest stock,
And make conceive a bark of baser kind
By Ijud of nobler race : this is an art
Wliich does mend nature, change it rather ; hid
The art itself is nature.

("Winter's Tale.")

"For high Treason is not written in ice, that ivhen the body
relenteth, the impression should go atcaij " (Charge of Owen indicted
of High Treason in the King's Bench, by Sir Francis Bacon,
p. 55, Part I., " Resuscitatio," 1671).

PARALLELS. 197

Compare —

Duke. This weak impress of Love is a figure
Trenched in ice, -whicli with an hour's heat
Dissolves in water, and doth lose his form :
A little time will melt her frozen thoughts.

(" Two Gentlemen of Verona," act iii. so. 1.)

Half won is match well made ; match and well make it.

(" All's AVell that Ends Well," act iv. sc. 3.)

"Dimidium facti qui bene caepit habet" ("Colours of Good
and Evil," 9).

Seneca saith well ; " That aiujer is like ruin, whicli breaks itself
upon wluit it falls " (" Anger ").

Cardinal JFoIscij. What should this mean ?
What sudden anger this ? How have I reap'd it ?
He i^avtedfroicningfrom me, as if ruin
Leajidfrovi his eyes.

(" Henry VIII.," act iii. sc. 2.)

They say, my Lords, Ira furor brcvis est,
But yond man is very angiy.

(" Timon of Athens," act i. sc. 1.)

"The third is, where a man is killed upon a sudden heat or
affray, whereunto the Law gives some little favour, because a man
in fury is not himself. Ira furor hrevis, \ATath is a short madness "
(Sir Francis Bacon's Charge, " At a Session of the Verge ").

" Sure I am, it was like a Tartar's or Parthian' s how, which

shooteth backward " (Speech upon Subsidy, p. 4, " Resuscitatio,"

1671).

Arm me audacity from head to foot !
Or, like the Parthian, I shall fl^jing fight.

(" Cymbeline," act i. sc. 7.)

Now am I like that proud insulting ship,
Which Ccesar and his fortune hare at once.

("1 King Henry VI.," act i. sc. 2.)

198 PARALLELS.

"So Caesar said to the Pilot in the Tempest, Ccvsarem 2wrf(i$ et
fortunam ejus " (" Of Fortune ").

" So when the four pV/rf?-,-^ of government are mainly shaken or

weakened (which are Religion, Justice, Counsell, and Treasure)

men had need to pray for fair weather " (" Seditions and

Troubles ").

Brave peers of England, fj(7/rt?'A- of the State.

(" 2 Henry YL," act i. so. 1.)

" There be that can i^c^ck the cards, and yet cannot play well "

(" Cunning ").

She Eros has
Pack'd cards with Ca?sar, and false play'd my glorj'
Unto an enemy's triumph.

(" Antony and Cleopatra," act iv. sc. 14.)

Where like Arion on the Dolphins back,

I saw him hold acquaintance witli the waves

So long as I could see.

("Twelfth Night," act i. sc. 2.)

Orpheus in sylvis, inter delphinas Arion.

(Virgil, "Eclogue YIIL," 56.)

("Two Books Advancement of Learning," Book II., p. 179.)

" The tongue speaks to the ear, but the gesture speaks to the

eye" ("Advancement of Learning," 1640, p. 182, Book IIL).

A jest's propriety lies in the ear.

(" Love's Labour's Lost," act v. sc. 2.)

" It was a sparing speech of the ancients to say That a Friend
is another himself: for that a friend is far more than himself"
(" Friendship ").

Make thee another self, for Love of me.

(" Sonnets.")

'Tis thee (myself) that for myself I praise,
Painting my age with beauty of thy days.

(" Sonnets.")

15ut liere's the joy — my friend and I arc one ;

("Sonnets.")

PARALLELS. 199

The parallel is all the more striking, inasmuch as these
Sonnets are addressed to a friend. And Bacon continues in this
Essay : — " If a man have a true Friend he may rest almost secure
that the care of those things will continue after him. So that a
man hath, as it were, two lives in his desire" ("Friendship").
This idea of a second life through friendship is repeated in the
Sonnets : —

Yoii should live ticice ; in it and in my rhyme.

("Sonnets.")

" They perfect Nature, and are perfected by Experience " (Essay
on " Studies ").

Experience is by industry achieved,
And perfected by the swift course of time.

("Two Gentlemen of Verona," act i. so. 3.)

"And yet that is the case of bad officers, treasurers, ambas-
sadors, generals, and other false and corrupt servants, which set
a bias upon their hoivl, of their own petty ends and envies, to the
overthrow of their master's great and important affairs" ("Of
Wisdom for a Man's Self," 1625).

Pet. AVell, forward, forward ! thus the bowl should run,
Aiul. not unluckily against the bias.*

("Taming of the Shrew," act iv. so. 5.)

" Wisdom for a man's self is, in many branches thereof, a
depraved thing. It is the JFisdom of Eats, that will be sure to leave
a house before it fall " (" Of Wisdom for a Man's Self").

A rotten carcass of a boat, not rigg'd,
Kor tackle, sail, or mast ; the very rats
Instinctively have quit it.

("Tempest," act i. sc. 2.)

* You bowl well, if you do not horse the bowl an hand too much. You know
the fine bowler is knee almost to gi'ound in the delivery of the cast. (Conf.
13th June 1623, p. 353, Birch's Letters.)

200 PARALLELS.

"It is the Avisdom of crocodiles that shed tears when they
would devour " (""Wisdom for a Man's Self").

If that the earth could teem with woman's tears,
Each drop she falls would prove a Crocodile.

("Othello," act iv. sc. 1.)

Of all the myriad minded characters of the plays, Cardinal
Wolsey represents and embodies best the dangers and the
glories of amhition. In Bacon's Essay upon "Xature in Men,"
he Avrites : —

" And at the first, let him practise with helps, a& sicimmers do
with bladders."

I have ventured,
Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders,
This many summers in a sea of glory.

(" Henry VIII.," act iii. sc. 2.)

" What a man hath contracted through his own default, is a
greater evil; what is imposed from Avithout, is a less evil.
Where the evil is derived from a man's oAvn fault, there the
grief strikes inward, and does more deeply wound and pierce the
heart" (8, "Colours of Good and Evil," p. 289, "Advancement
of Learning ").

Those wounds heal ill that men do give themselves.

("Troilus and Cressida," act iii. sc. 3.)

"The stairs to honours are steep, the standing slippery, the
regresse a downfall" (Antitheta Eerum, Honour, vii. p. 303,
" Advancement of Learning ").

The art o' the court,
As hard to leave as keep ; whose top to climb
Is certain falling, or so slijj]>ci-y tliat
The fear's as bad as falling.

(" Cymbeline," act iii. sc. 3.)

Ccesar. But I am constant as the Northern star,
Of whose true fixt and resting quality
There is no fellow in the firmament.

("Julius CcTsar," act iii. sc. 1.)

PARALLELS. 201

"If it were not for two things, that are constant ; the one is
that the fixed stars ever stand at like distance one from another "
(Essay 58, "Vicissitude of Things").

" To conclude tJie irregularities of Mars, the expiations of Venus,
the Avondrous labours or passions, which are often found in the
sun or in Fenus" (Book III, " De Augmentis," p. 152, 1640).

3Iars his true moving, even as in the heavens
So in the earth to this day is not known.

("1 King Henry VI.," act i. sc. 2.)

Fair Diomed, you do as Chapmen do,
Dispraise the thing that you desire to buy.

("Troilus and Cressida," act iv. sc. 1.)

" Out of fraud, and circumventive cunning, for Praisers <riul
Dispraisers many times do hit aim at their own ends, and do not
think all they say : —

Laudat veualeis qui vult extrudere merces.

So ^ It is naught, it is naught,' saith the buyer, and when he is gone
he vaunteth" ("Colours of Good and Evil," 1). (Bacon borrows
the quotation from Horace (lib. 2) and Proverbs xx.)

" He conquers twice who upon victory overcomes himself "
(Bacon).

Brave conquerors ! for so you are,
That war against your own afl'ections,
And the huge army of the world's desires.

(" Love's Labour's Lost," act i. sc. 1.)

" To praise a man's self cannot be decent, except it be in rare
cases " (Bacon).

We wound our modesty, and make foul the clearings of our deservings,
■when of ourselves we publish them. ("All's AVell that Ends Well," act 1.
sc. 3.)

202 PARALLELS.

The southern v:md
Doth {(lay tlie trumpet to his inirposes,
And by his holloic vjhistling in the leaves,
Foretells a temjicst, and a bhistering day.

("1 King Henry IV.," act v. sc. 1.)

"And as there are certain luilloio hJasfs of wind, and secret
su'eUiugs of seas before a tempest, so are there in states " (" Sedi-
tions and Troubles '"').

Before the times of change, still is it so :
By a divine instinct men's minds mistrust
Ensuing dangers : as by proof we see
The icaters svxll hefore a boisterous storm.

("Richard the Third," act ii. sc. 2.)

" Yet beware of being too material when there is any impedi-
ment or obstruction in men's wits" ("Dispatch").

A material fool.

("As You Like It," act iii. sc. 3.)

" And therefore, whether your Majesty will any more rest, and
build this great JFheel of your Kingdom upon these broken and
brittle pins, and try experiments further upon the health and
body of your state, I leave to your pi'inccly judgment " (Letter