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SECTION V.—Francis Bacon

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In this band of scholars, dreamers, and inquirers, appears the most comprehensive, sensible, originative of the minds of the age, Francis Bacon, a great and luminous intellect, one of the finest of this poetic progeny, who, like his predecessors, was naturally disposed to clothe his ideas in the most splendid dress: in this age, a thought did not seem complete until it had assumed form and color. But what distinguishes him from the others is, that with him an image only serves to concentrate meditation. He reflected long, stamped on his mind all the parts and relations of his subject; he is master of it, and then, instead of exposing this complete idea in a graduated chain of reasoning, he embodies it in a comparison so expressive, exact, lucid, that behind the figure we perceive all the details of the idea, like liquor in a fine crystal vase. Judge of his style by a single example:

"For as water, whether it be the dew of Heaven or the springs of the earth, easily scatters and loses itself in the ground, except it be collected into some receptacle, where it may by union and consort comfort and sustain itself (and for that cause, the industry of man hath devised aqueducts, cisterns, and pools, and likewise beautified them with various ornaments of magnificence and state, as well as for use and necessity); so this excellent liquor of knowledge, whether it descend from divine inspiration or spring from human sense, would soon perish and vanish into oblivion, if it were not preserved in books, traditions, conferences, and especially in places appointed for such matters as universities, colleges, and schools, where it may have both a fixed habitation, and means and opportunity of increasing and collecting itself."[384]

"The greatest error of all the rest, is the mistaking or misplacing of the last or farthest end of knowledge: for men have entered into a desire of learning and knowledge, sometimes upon a natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite; sometimes to entertain their minds with variety and delight; sometimes for ornament and reputation; and sometimes to enable them to victory of wit and contradiction; and most times for lucre and profession; and seldom sincerely to give a true account of their gift of reason, to the benefit and use of men: as if there were sought in knowledge a couch whereupon to rest a searching and restless spirit; or a terrace, for a wandering and variable mind to walk up and down with a fair prospect; or a tower of state, for a proud mind to raise itself upon; or a fort or commanding ground, for strife and contention; or a shop, for profit or sale; and not a rich storehouse, for the glory of the Creator, and the relief of man's estate."[385]

This is his mode of thought, by symbols, not by analysis; instead of explaining his idea, he transposes and translates it—translates it entire, to the smallest details, enclosing all in the majesty of a grand period, or in the brevity of a striking sentence. Thence springs a style of admirable richness, gravity, and vigor, now solemn and symmetrical, now concise and piercing, always elaborate, and full of color.[386] There is nothing in English prose superior to his diction.

Thence is derived also his manner of conceiving things. He is not a dialectician, like Hobbes or Descartes, apt in arranging ideas, in educing one from another, in leading his reader from the simple to the complex by an unbroken chain. He is a producer of conceptions and of sentences. The matter being explored, he says to us: "Such it is; touch it not on that side; it must be approached from the other." Nothing more; no proof, no effort to convince: he affirms, and does nothing more; he has thought in the manner of artists and poets, and he speaks after the manner of prophets and seers. Cogitata et visa this title of one of his books might be the title of all. The most admirable, the "Novum Organum," is a string of aphorisms—a collection, as it were, of scientific decrees, as of an oracle who foresees the future and reveals the truth. And to make the resemblance complete, he expresses them by poetical figures, by enigmatic abbreviations, almost in Sibylline verses: Idola specûs, Idola tribûs, Idola fori, Idola theatri, everyone will recall these strange names, by which he signifies the four kinds of illusions to which man is subject.[387] Shakespeare and the seers do not contain more vigorous or expressive condensations of thought, more resembling inspiration, and in Bacon they are to be found everywhere. On the whole, his process is that of the creators; it is intuition, not reasoning. When he has laid up his store of facts, the greatest possible, on some vast subject, on some entire province of the mind, on the whole anterior philosophy, on the general condition of the sciences, on the power and limits of human reason, he casts over all this a comprehensive view, as it were a great net, brings up a universal idea, condenses his idea into a maxim, and hands it to us with the words, "Verify and profit by it."

There is nothing more hazardous, more like fantasy, than this mode of thought, when it is not checked by natural and good strong sense. This common-sense, which is a kind of natural divination, the stable equilibrium of an intellect always gravitating to the true, like the needle to the pole, Bacon possesses in the highest degree. He has a pre-eminently practical, even an utilitarian mind, such as we meet with later in Bentham, and such as their business habits were to impress more and more upon the English. At the age of sixteen, while at the university, he was dissatisfied with Aristotle's philosophy,[388] not that he thought meanly of the author, whom, on the contrary, he calls a great genius; but because it seemed to him of no practical utility, incapable of producing works which might promote the well-being of men. We see that from the outset he struck upon his dominant idea; all else comes to him from this; a contempt for antecedent philosophy, the conception of a different system, the entire reformation of the sciences by the indication of a new goal, the definition of a distinct method, the opening up of unsuspected anticipations.[389] It is never speculation which he relishes, but the practical application of it. His eyes are turned not to heaven, but to earth; not to things abstract and vain, but to things palpable and solid; not to curious, but to profitable truths. He seeks to better the condition of men, to labor for the welfare of mankind, to enrich human life with new discoveries and new resources, to equip mankind with new powers and new instruments of action, His philosophy itself is but an instrument, organum, a sort of machine or lever constructed to enable the intellect to raise a weight, to break through obstacles, to open up vistas, to accomplish tasks, which had hitherto surpassed its power. In his eyes, every special science, like science in general, should be an implement. He invites mathematicians to quit their pure geometry, to study numbers only with a view to natural philosophy, to seek formulas only to calculate real quantities and natural motions. He recommends moralists to study the soul, the passions, habits, temptations, not merely in a speculative way, but with a view to the cure or diminution of vice, and assigns to the science of morals as its goal the amelioration of morals. For him, the object of science is always the establishment of an art; that is, the production of something of practical utility; when he wished to describe the efficacious nature of his philosophy by a tale, he delineated in the "New Atlantis," with a poet's boldness and the precision of a seer, almost employing the very terms in use now, modern applications, and the present organization of the sciences, academies, observatories, air-balloons, submarine vessels, the improvement of land, the transmutation of species, regenerations, the discovery of remedies, the preservation of food. The end of our foundation, says his principal personage, is the knowledge of causes and secret motions of things, and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible. And this "possible" is infinite.

How did this grand and just conception originate? Doubtless common-sense and genius, too, were necessary to its production; but neither common-sense nor genius was lacking to men: there had been more than one who, observing, like Bacon, the progress of particular industries, could, like him, have conceived of universal industry, and from certain limited ameliorations have advanced to unlimited amelioration. Here we see the power of connection; men think they do everything by their individual thought, and they can do nothing without the assistance of the thoughts of their neighbors; they fancy that they are following the small voice within them, but they only hear it because it is swelled by the thousand buzzing and imperious voices, which, issuing from all surrounding or distant circumstances, are confounded with it in an harmonious vibration. Generally they hear it, as Bacon did, from the first moment of reflection; but it had become inaudible among the opposing sounds which came from without to smother it. Could this confidence in the infinite enlargement of human power, this glorious idea of the universal conquest of nature, this firm hope in the continual increase of well-being and happiness, have germinated, grown, occupied an intelligence entirely, and thence have struck its roots, been propagated and spread over neighboring intelligences, in a time of discouragement and decay, when men believed the end of the world at hand, when things were falling into ruin about them, when Christian mysticism, as in the first centuries, ecclesiastical tyranny, as in the fourteenth century, were convincing them of their impotence, by perverting their intellectual efforts and curtailing their liberty. On the contrary, such hopes must then have seemed to be outbursts of pride, or suggestions of the carnal mind. They did seem so; and the last representatives of ancient science, and the first of the new, were exiled or imprisoned, assassinated or burned. In order to be developed an idea must be in harmony with surrounding civilization; before man can expect to attain the dominion over nature, or attempts to improve his condition, amelioration must have begun on all sides, industries have increased, knowledge have been accumulated, the arts expanded, a hundred thousand irrefutable witnesses must have come incessantly to give proof of his power and assurance of his progress. The "masculine birth of the time" (temporis partus masculus) is the title which Bacon applies to his work, and it is a true one. In fact, the whole age co-operated in it; by this creation it was finished. The consciousness of human power and prosperity gave to the Renaissance its first energy, its ideal, its poetic materials, its distinguishing features; and now it furnishes it with its final expression, its scientific doctrine, and its ultimate object.

We may add also, its method. For, the end of a journey once determined, the route is laid down, since the end always determines the route; when the point to be reached is changed, the path of approach is changed, and science, varying its object, varies also its method. So long as it limited its effort to the satisfying an idle curiosity, opening out speculative vistas, establishing a sort of opera in speculative minds, it could launch out any moment into metaphysical abstractions and distinctions: it was enough for it to skim over experience; it soon quitted it, and came all at once upon great words, quiddities, the principle of individuation, final causes. Half proofs sufficed science; at bottom it did not care to establish a truth, but to get an opinion; and its instrument, the syllogism, was serviceable only for refutations, not for discoveries; it took general laws for a starting-point instead of a point of arrival; instead of going to find them, it fancied them found. The syllogism was good in the schools, not in nature; it made disputants, not discoverers. From the moment that science had art for an end, and men studied in order to act, all was transformed; for we cannot act without certain and precise knowledge. Forces, before they can be employed, must be measured and verified; before we can build a house, we must know exactly the resistance of the beams, or the house will collapse; before we can cure a sick man, we must know with certainty the effect of a remedy, or the patient will die. Practice makes certainty and exactitude a necessity to science, because practice is impossible when it has nothing to lean upon but guesses and approximations. How can we eliminate guesses and approximations? How introduce into science, solidity and precision? We must imitate the cases in which science, issuing in practice, has proved to be precise and certain, and these cases are the industries. We must, as in the industries, observe, essay, grope about, verify, keep our mind fixed on sensible and particular things, advance to general rules only step by step; not anticipate experience, but follow it; not imagine nature, but interpret it. For every general effect, such as heat, whiteness, hardness, liquidity, we must seek a general condition, so that in producing the condition we may produce the effect. And for this it is necessary, by fit rejections and exclusions, to extract the condition sought from the heap of facts in which it lies buried, construct the table of cases from which the effect is absent, the table where it is present, the table where the effect is shown in various degrees, so as to isolate and bring to light the condition which produced it.[390] Then we shall have, not useless universal axioms, but efficacious mediate axioms, true laws from which we can derive works, and which are the sources of power in the same degree as the sources of light.[391] Bacon described and predicted in this modern science and industry, their correspondence, method, resources, principle; and after more than two centuries it is still to him that we go even at the present day to look for the theory of what we are attempting and doing.


CHOICE EXAMPLES OF EARLY PRINTING AND ENGRAVING.

Fac-similes from Rare and Curious Books.

THE NEW PSALTER OF THE VIRGIN MARY.

The "Novum Beatæ Mariæ Virginis Psalterium" was printed by the Cistercians monks of the monastery of Sienna, in the duchy of Magdeburg, near Wittemberg, in 1492. The present illustration shows the page of dedication, in which mention is made of the Emperor Frederick, whose arms, the double-headed eagle, appears in the border. The book was printed in the year before the emperor died. The border is an easy and flowing design of roses, which are always considered an emblem of the Virgin. The volume is a remarkable production, rare and much prized by collectors.

Beyond this great view, he has discovered nothing. Cowley, one of his admirers, rightly said that, like Moses on Mount Pisgah, he was the first to announce the promised land; but he might have added quite as justly, that, like Moses, he did not enter there. He pointed out the route, but did not travel it; he taught men how to discover natural laws, but discovered none. His definition of heat is extremely imperfect. His "Natural History" is full of fanciful explanations.[392] Like the poets, he peoples nature with instincts and desires; attributes to bodies an actual voracity, to the atmosphere a thirst for light, sounds, odors, vapors which it drinks in; to metals a sort of haste to be incorporated with acids. He explains the duration of the bubbles of air which float on the surface of liquids, by supposing that air has a very small or no appetite for height. He sees in every quality, weight, ductility, hardness, a distinct essence which has its special cause; so that when a man knows the cause of every quality of gold, he will be able to put all these causes together, and make gold. In the main, with the alchemists, Paracelsus and Gilbert, Kepler himself, with all the men of his time, men of imagination, nourished on Aristotle, he represents nature as a compound of secret and living energies, inexplicable and primordial forces, distinct and indecomposable essences, adapted each by the will of the Creator to produce a distinct effect. He almost saw souls endowed with latent repugnances and occult inclinations, which aspire to or resist certain directions, certain mixtures, and certain localities. On this account also he confounds everything in his researches in an undistinguishable mass, vegetative and medicinal properties, mechanical and curative, physical and moral, without considering the most complex as depending on the simplest, but each on the contrary in itself, and taken apart, as an irreducible and independent existence. Obstinate in this error, the thinkers of the age mark time without advancing. They see clearly with Bacon the wide field of discovery, but they cannot enter upon it. They want an idea, and for want of this idea they do not advance. The disposition of mind which but now was a lever, is become an obstacle: it must be changed, that the obstacle may be got rid of. For ideas, I mean great and efficacious ones, do not come at will nor by chance, by the effort of an individual, or by a happy accident. Methods and philosophies, as well as literatures and religions, arise from the spirit of the age; and this spirit of the age makes them potent or powerless. One state of public intelligence excludes a certain kind of literature; another, a certain scientific conception. When it happens thus, writers and thinkers labor in vain, the literature is abortive, the conception does not make its appearance. In vain they turn one way and another, trying to remove the weight which hinders them; something stronger than themselves paralyzes their hands and frustrates their endeavors. The central pivot of the vast wheel on which human affairs move must be displaced one notch, that all may move with its motion. At this moment the pivot was moved, and thus a revolution of the great wheel begins, bringing round a new conception of nature, and in consequence that part of the method which was lacking. To the diviners, the creators, the comprehensive and impassioned minds who seized objects in a lump and in masses, succeeded the discursive thinkers, the systematic thinkers, the graduated and clear logicians, who, disposing ideas in continuous series, lead the hearer gradually from the simple to the most complex by easy and unbroken paths. Descartes superseded Bacon; the classical age obliterated the Renaissance; poetry and lofty imagination gave way before rhetoric, eloquence, and analysis. In this transformation of mind, ideas were transformed. Everything was drained dry and simplified. The universe, like all else, was reduced to two or three notions; and the conception of nature, which was poetical, became mechanical. Instead of souls, living forces, repugnances, and attractions, we have pulleys, levers, impelling forces. The world, which seemed a mass of instinctive powers, is now like a mere machinery of cog-wheels. Beneath this adventurous supposition lies a large and certain truth; that there is, namely, a scale of facts, some at the summit very complex, others at the base very simple; those above having their origin in those below, so that the lower ones explain the higher; and that we must seek the primary laws of things in the laws of motion. The search was made, and Galileo found them. Thenceforth the work of the Renaissance, outstripping the extreme point to which Bacon had pushed it, and at which he had left it, was able to proceed onward by itself, and did so proceed, without limit.

[265]See, at Bruges, the pictures of Hemling (fifteenth century). No paintings enable us to understand so well the ecclesiastical piety of the Middle Ages, which was altogether like that of the Buddhists.

[266]The first carriage was in 1564. It caused much astonishment. Some said that it was "a great sea-shell brought from China"; others, "that it was a temple in which cannibals worshipped the devil."

[267]For a picture of this state of things, see Fenn's "Paston Letters."

[268]Louis XI in France, Ferdinand and Isabella in Spain, Henry VII in England. In Italy the feudal regime ended earlier, by the establishment of republics and principalities.

[269]1488, Act of Parliament on Enclosures.

[270]A "Compendious Examination," 1581, by William Strafford. Act of Parliament, 1541.

[271]Between 1377 and 1588 the increase was from two and a half to five millions.

[272]In 1585; Ludovic Guicciardini.

[273]Henry VIII at the beginning of his reign had but one ship of war. Elizabeth sent out one hundred and fifty against the Armada. In 1553 was founded a company to trade with Russia. In 1578 Drake circumnavigated the globe. In 1600 the East India Company was founded.

[274]Nathan Drake, "Shakespeare and his Times," 1817, I. V. 72 et passim.

[275]Nathan Drake, "Shakespeare and his Times," I. V. 102.

[276]This was called the Tudor style. Under James I, in the hands of Inigo Jones, it became entirely Italian, approaching the antique.

[277]Burton, "Anatomy of Melancholy," 12th ed. 1821. Stubbes, "Anatomie of Abuses," ed. Turnbull, 1836.

[278]Nathan Drake, "Shakespeare and his Times," II. 6, 87.

[279]Holinshed (1586), 1808, 6 vols. III. 763 et passim.

[280]Ibid., Reign of Henry VII "Elizabeth and James Progresses," by Nichols.

[281]Laneham's Entertainment at Killingworth Castle, 1575. Nichols's "Progresses," vol. I. London, 1788.

[282]Ben Jonson's works, ed. Gifford, 1816, 9 vols. "Masque of Hymen," vol. VII. 76.

[283]Certain private letters also describe the court of Elizabeth as a place where there was little piety or practice of religion, and where all enormities reigned in the highest degree.

[284]Nathan Drake, "Shakespeare and his Times," chap. V. and VI.

[285]Stubbes, "Anatomie of Abuses," p. 168 et passim.

[286]Hentzner's "Travels in England" (Bentley's translation). He thought that the figure carried about in the Harvest Home represented Ceres.

[287]Warton, vol. II. sec. 35. Before 1600 all the great poets were translated into English, and between 1550 and 1616 all the great historians of Greece and Rome. Lyly in 1500 first taught Greek in public.

[288]Ascham, "The Scholemaster" (1570), ed. Arber, 1870, first book, 78 et passim.

[289]Ma il vero e principal ornemento dell' animo in ciascuno penso io che siano le lettere, benche i Franchesi solamente conoscano la nobilita dell'arme... et tutti i litterati tengon per vilissimi huomini. Castiglione "Il Cortegiano," ed. 1585, p. 112.

[290]See Burchard (the Pope's Steward) account of the festival at which Lucretia Borgia was present. Letters of Aretinus, "Life of Cellini," etc.

[291]See his sketches at Oxford, and those of Fra Bartolomeo at Florence. See also the Martyrdom of St. Laurence, by Baccio Bandinelli.

[292]Benvenuto Cellini, "Principles of the Art of Design."

[293]"Life of Cellini." Compare also these exercises which Castiglione prescribes for a well-educated man, in his "Cortegiano," ed. 1585, p. 55: "Peró voglio che il nostro cortegiano sia perfetto cavaliere d'ogni sella.... Et perche degli Italiani è peculiar laude il cavalcare bene alia brida, il maneggiar con raggione massimamente cavalli aspri, il corre lance, il giostare, sia in questo de meglior Italiani.... Nel torneare, teper un passo, combattere una sbarra, sia buono tra il miglior francesi.... Nel giocare a canne, correr torri, lanciar haste e dardi, sia tra Spagnuoli eccelente.... Conveniente è ancor sapere saltare, e correre;... ancor nobile exercitio il gioco di palla.... Non di minor laude estimo il voltegiar a cavallo."

[294]Puttenham, "The Arte of English Poesie," ed. Arber, 1869, book I. ch. 31, p. 74.

[295]Surrey's "Poems," Pickering, 1831, p. 17.

[296]Ibid. "The faithful lover declareth his pains and his uncertain joys, and with only hope recomforteth his woful heart," p. 53.

[297]Ibid. "Description of Spring, wherein everything renews, save only the lover," p. 2.

[298]Ibid. p. 50.

[299]Syrrey's "Poems. A description of the restless state of the lover when absent from the mistress of his heart," p. 78

[300]In another piece, "Complaint on the Absence of her Lover being upon the Sea," he speaks in direct terms of his wife, almost as affectionately.

[301]Greene, Beaumont and Fletcher, Webster, Shakespeare, Ford, Otway, Richardson, De Foe, Fielding, Dickens, Thackeray, etc.

[302]"The Frailty and Hurtfulness of Beauty."

[303]"Description of Spring. A Vow to Love Faithfully."

[304]"Complaint of the Lover Disdarned."

[305]Surrey, ed. Nott.

[306]The Speaker's address to Charles II on his restoration. Compare it with the speech of M. de Fontanes under the Empire. In each case it was the close of a literary epoch. Read for illustration the speech before the University of Oxford, "Athenæ Oxonienses," I. 193.

[307]His second work, "Euphues and his England," appeared in 1581.

[308]See Shakespeare's young men, Mercutio especially.

[309]"The Maid her Metamorphosis."

[310]Two French novels of the age of Louis XIV, each in ten volumes, and written by Mademoiselle de Scudéry.—Tr.

[311]Celadon, a rustic lover in "Astrée," a French novel in five volumes, named after the heroine, and written by d'Urfé (d. 1625).—Tr.

[312]"Arcadia," ed. fol. 1629, p. 117.

[313]"Arcadia," ed. fol. 1629, p. 114.

[314]"The Defence of Poesie," ed. fol. 1629, p. 558: "I dare undertake, that Orlando Furioso, or honest King Arthur, will never displease a soldier: but the quidditie of Ens and prima materia, will hardly agree with a Corselet." See also, in the same book, the very lively and spirited personification of History and Philosophy, full of genuine talent.

[315]"The Defence of Poesie," ed. fol. 1629, p. 553.

[316]Ibid. p. 550.

[317]Ibid. p. 552.

[318]Ibid. p. 560. Here and there we find also verse as spirited as this: "Or Pindar's Apes, flaunt they in phrases fine, Enam'ling with pied flowers their thoughts of gold."—p. 568.

[319]"Astrophel and Stella," ed. fol. 1629, 101st sonnet, p. 613.

[320]Ibid. 8th song, p. 603.

[321]"Astrophel and Stella" (1629), 8th song, 604.

[322]Ibid. 10th song, p. 610.

[323]Ibid, sonnet 69, p. 555.

[324]"Astrophel and Stella" (1629), sonnet 102, p. 614.

[325]Ibid. p. 525: this sonnet is headed E. D. Wood, in his "Athen. Oxon." i., says it was written by Sir Edward Dyer, Chancellor of the Most noble Order of the Garter.—Tr.

[326]Ibid, sonnet 43, p. 545.

[327]"Astrophel and Stella" (1629), sonnet 18, p. 573.

[328]Ibid, last sonnet, p. 539.

[329]Nathan Drake, "Shakspeare and his Times," I. Part 2, ch. 2, 3, 4. Among these 233 poets the authors of isolated pieces are not reckoned, but only those who published or collected their works.

[330]Drayton's "Polyolbion," ed. 1622, 13th song, p. 214.

[331]Shakespeare's "Tempest," act IV. 1.

[332]Ibid, act IV. 2.

[333]Greene's Poems, ed. Bell, "Eurymachus in Laudem Mirimidæ," p. 73.

[334]Ibid. Melicertus's description of his Mistress, p. 38.

[335]Spenser's Works, ed. Todd, 1863, "The Faërie Queene," I. c. II, st. 51.

[336]Ben Jonson's Poems, ed. R. Bell. Celebration of Charis; her Triumph, p. 125.

[337]"Cupid's Pastime," unknown author, ab. 1621.

[338]Ibid.

[339]"Rosalind's Madrigal."

[340]Greene's Poems, ed. R. Bell, Menaphon's Eclogue, p. 41.

[341]Ibid., Melicertus's Eclogue, p. 43.

[342]"As you Like It."

[343]"The Sad Shepherd." See also Beaumont and Fletcher, "The Faithful Shepherdess."

[344]This poem was, and still is, frequently attributed to Shakespeare. It appears as his in Knight's edition, published a few years ago. Izaak Walton, however, writing about fifty years after Marlowe's death, attributes it to him. In Palgrave's "Golden Treasury," it is also ascribed to the same author. As a confirmation, let us state that Ithamore, in Marlowe's "Jew of Malta," says to the courtesan (Act IV. Sc. 4): "Thou in those groves, by Dis above, Shalt live with me, and be my love."—Tr.

[345]Chalmers's "English Poets"; William Warner, "Fourth Book of Albion's England," ch. XX. p. 551.

[346]Chalmers's "English Poets," M. Drayton's "Fourth Eclogue," IV. p. 436.

[347]M. Jourdain is the hero of Molière's comedy, "Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme," the type of a vulgar and successful upstart; Mamamouchi is a mock title.—Tr.

[348]Lulli, a celebrated Italian composer of the time of Molière.—Tr.

[349]It is very doubtful whether Spenser was so poor as he is generally believed to have been.—Tr.

[350]"He died for want of bread, in King Street." Ben Jonson, quoted by Drummond.

[351]"Hymns of Love and Beauty"; Of Heavenly Love and Beauty.

[352]"A Hymne in Honour of Beautie," lines 92-105.

[353]"A Hymne in Honour of Love," lines 176-182.

[354]"The Faërie Queene," I. c. 8, stanzas 22, 23.

[355]"The Shepherd's Calendar, Amoretti, Sonnets, Prothalamion, Epithalamion, Muiopotmos, Vergil's Gnat, The Ruines of Time, The Teares of the Muses," etc.

[356]Published in 1580: dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney.

[357]"Prothalamion," lines 19-54.

[358]"Astrophel and Stella," lines 181-192.

[359]Words attributed to him by Lodowick Bryskett, "Discourse of Civil Life," ed. 1606, p. 26.

[360]Ariosto, 1474-1533. Tasso, 1544-1595. Cervantes, 1547-1616. Rabelais, 1483-1553.

[361]"The Faërie Queene," II. c. 3, stanzas 22-30.

[362]Ibid. III. c. 5, stanza 51.

[363]"The Faërie Queene," III. c. 6, stanzas 6 and 7.

[364]Ibid, stanzas 17 and 18.

[365]"The Faërie Queene," IV. c. 1, stanza 13.

[366]Clorinda, the heroine of the infidel army in Tasso's epic poem, "Jerusalem Delivered"; Marfisa, an Indian Queen, who figures in Ariosto's "Orlando Furioso," and also, in Boyardo's "Orlando Innamorato."—Tr.

[367]"The Faërie Queene," III. c. 4, stanza 33.

[368]"The Faërie Queene," II. c. 7, stanzas 28-46.

[369]"The Faërie Queene," II. c. 12, stanzas 53-78.

[370]"Nugæ Antiquæ," I. 349 et passim.

[371] "Some asked me where the Rubies grew, And nothing I did say; But with my finger pointed to The lips of Julia. Some ask'd how Pearls did grow, and where; Then spake I to my girle, To part her lips, and shew me there The quarelets of Pearl. One ask'd me where the roses grew; I bade him not go seek; But forthwith bade my Julia show A bud in either cheek." —Herrick's "Hesperides," ed. Walford, 1859; The Rock of Rubies, p. 32. "About the sweet bag of a bee, Two Cupids fell at odds; And whose the pretty prize shu'd be, They vow'd to ask the Gods. Which Venus hearing, thither came, And for their boldness stript them; And taking thence from each his flame, With rods of mirtle whipt them. Which done, to still their wanton cries, When quiet grown sh'ad seen them. She kist and wip'd their dove-like eyes, And gave the bag between them." —Herrick, Ibid. The Bag of the Bee, p. 42. "Why so pale and wan, fond lover? Pr'ythee, why so pale? Will, when looking well can't move her, Looking ill prevail? Pr'ythee, why so pale? Why so dull and mute, young sinner? Pr'ythee, why so mute? Will, when speaking well can't win her, Saying nothing do't? Pr'ythee, why so mute? Quit, quit for shame; this will not move, This cannot take her; If of herself she will not love, Nothing can make her. The devil take her!" —Sir John Suckling's Works, ed. A. Suckling, 1836, p. 70. "As when a lady, walking Flora's bower, Picks here a pink, and there a gilly-flower, Now plucks a violet from her purple bed, And then a primrose, the year's maidenhead, There nips the brier, here the lover's pansy, Shifting her dainty pleasures with her fancy, This on her arms, and that she lists to wear Upon the borders of her curious hair; At length a rose-bud (passing all the rest) She plucks, and bosoms in her lily breast."—Quarles, Stanzas.

[372]See, in particular, his satire against courtiers. The following is against imitators: "But he is worst, who (beggarly) doth chaw Others wit's fruits, and in his ravenous maw Rankly digested, doth those things out-spew, As his owne things; and they 're his owne, 't is true, For if one eate my meate, though it be knowne The meat was mine, th' excrement is his owne." —Donne's "Satires," 1639. Satire II. p. 128.

[373] "When I behold a stream, which from the spring Doth with doubtful melodious murmuring, Or in a speechless slumber calmly ride Her wedded channel's bosom, ana there chide And bend her brows, and swell, if any bough Does but stoop down to kiss her utmost brow; Yet if her often gnawing kisses win The traiterous banks to gape and let her in, She rusheth violently and doth divorce Her from her native and her long-kept course, And roares, and braves it, and in gallant scorn In flatt'ring eddies promising return, She flouts her channel, which thenceforth is dry. Then say I: That is she, and this am I."—Donne, Elegy VI.

[374]Donne's Poems, 1639, "A Feaver," p. 15.

[375]Ibid. "The Flea," p. 1.

[376]A valet in Molière's "Les Précieuses Ridicules," who apes and exaggerates his master's manners and style, and pretends to be a marquess. He also appears in "L'Etourdi" and "Le dépit Amoureux," by the same author.—Tr.

[377]1608-1667. I refer to the eleventh edition, of 1710.

[378] "The Spring" ("The Mistress," I. 72).

[379]See in Shakespeare, "The Tempest, Measure for Measure, Hamlet"; in Beaumont and Fletcher, "Thierry and Theodoret," Act IV; Webster, passim.

[380]"Anatomy of Melancholy," 12th ed. 1821, 2 vols; Democritus to the Reader, I. 4.

[381]"Anatomy of Melancholy," I. part 2, sec. 2, Mem. 4, p. 420 et passim.

[382]"The Works of Sir Thomas Browne," ed. Wilkin, 1852, 3 vols. "Hydriotaphia," III. ch. V. 14 et passim.

[383]See Milsand, Étude sur Sir Thomas Browne, in the "Revue des Deux Mondes," 1858.

[384]Bacon's Works. Translation of the "De Augmentis Scientiarum," Book II; To the King.

[385]Ibid. Book I. The true end of learning mistaken.

[386]Especially in the Essays.

[387]See also "Novum Organum," Books I and II; the twenty-seven kinds of examples, with their metaphorical names: Instantiæ crucis, divortii januæ, Instantiæ innuentes, polychrestæ, magicæ, etc.

[388]"The Works of Francis Bacon," London, 1824, vol. VII. p. 2. "Latin Biography," by Rawley.

[389]This point is brought out by the review of Lord Macaulay. "Critical and Historical Essays," vol. III.

[390]"Novum Organum," II. 15 and 16.

[391]Ibid. I. I. 3.

[392]"Natural History," 800, 24, etc. "De Augmentis," III. 1.

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