the flow"; but he does not find in Shakespeare "a trace of any knowledge of the circulation of the blood," in the sense of Harvey.1 Now, as to whether or not William Shakespeare ever read these authors, we have not the least information; but we certainly know that Francis Bacon made apothegms out of this same Rabelais, and that he had studied Hippocrates, "the Father of the Art," as well as Galen, Paracelsus, and the rest. And he concludes a letter addressed to the Scottish physician, Dr. Morison, in 1603, on the coming in of King James, in these words: "So not doubting to see you here with his Majesty, considering that it belongeth to your art to feel pulses, and I assure you Galen doth not set down greater variety of pulses than do vent here in men's hearts"; and the mind of the author of the "Romeo and Juliet" (1595) must have been running upon the very subject of these investigations : 46 through all thy veins shall run A cold and drowsy humour, which shall seize Each vital spirit; for no pulse shall keep His natural progress, but surcease to beat." Act IV. Sc. 1. And it may very well be taken here as one of those numerous and singular coincidences of thought and expression, which everywhere drop out in the works of Bacon and Shakespeare, and especially in those which were written at about the same date and upon kindred subjects, that the phrase applied to Celsus, "the inquiry needed not by him so slightly to have been relinquished altogether," should reappear in his review of the labors of these same learned authors, and before that "rarest argument of wonder," which, in the play (written prior to 1594), was “to be relinquished of the artists, . . . . . both of Galen and Paracel sus," and "all the learned and authentic fellows," had as yet entirely passed out of his memory. Nor need there be any ..... 1 Hackett's Notes, 292. 8 Letter, Works (Philad.) III. 197. 2 Adv. of Learn. wonder that the ideas, expressions, words, metaphors, and technical learning of the two writings, in medicine as in law, and in many other branches of learning besides, should be so exactly alike, if we once conceive (what will be further demonstrated) that Francis Bacon was the author of both. The German critic, Schlegel, equally amazed at the extent of the knowledge and the depth of the philosophy of these plays of Shakespeare, the author of which he could not but consider as one who had mastered "all the things and relations of this world," does not hesitate to declare the received account of his life to be "a mere fabulous story, a blind and extravagant error":1 this Shakespeare must have been another sort of man from what we know him. The Germans seem to have been the first to discover and appreciate the full depth of his philosophy, not excepting Gervinus, who appears to have had less difficulty about the author himself. That a single passage, which had never attracted the particular attention of an English critic, other. wise than as a brilliant figure of speech, should be capable of creating whole books in the soul of Jean Paul Richter, is, perhaps, not much to be wondered at; especially, if we consider that he, to whose great learning, deep philosophy, and divine vision, this universe became crystalline and transparent, did not fail to see that no one had "better pursued and illumined the actual truth of things, even into the deepest vales and the little worms therein, than those twin-stars of poesy, Homer and Shakespeare." 2 Indeed, the bare proposition, that this man, on his arrival in London, at the age of twenty-three, with only such a history as we possess of his previous life, education, studies, and pursuits, could have begun almost immediately to produce the matchless works which we know by his name, not 1 Lectures on Dram. Lit., by A. W. Schlegel, Tr. by John Black, (Philad 1833,) p. 289. Vorschule der Esthetik, Werke, I. 25. 66 merely the most masterly works of art, and as such in the opinion of eminent critics, surpassing the Greek tragedy itself, but classical poems, and plays the most profoundly philosophical in the English language, or any other (for no less a critic than Goethe has awarded this high praise), may justly strike us in the outset as simply preposterous and absurd. "What!" exclaims Coleridge, at this consequence of the traditional biography, "are we to have miracles in sport? . . . . . Does God choose idiots by whom to convey divine truths to man?" Emerson, no less, considering that the Shakespeare Society had ascertained that this William Shakespeare was a good-natured sort of man, a jovial actor, manager, and shareholder, not in any striking manner distinguished from other actors and managers," and that he was " a veritable farmer" withal, engaged in all sorts of traffic at Stratford, doing business commissions in London, and suing Philip Rogers for malt delivered, while writing a "Hamlet," or a "Lear," is apparently obliged to lay down the problem in despair, with this significant confession: "I cannot marry this fact to his verse. Other admirable men have led lives in some sort of keeping with their thought; but this man, in wide contrast.' In like manner, Jean Paul Richter "would have him buried, if his life were like his writings, with Pythagoras, Plato, Socrates, and the highest nobility of the human race, in the same best consecrated earth of our globe, God's flower-garden in the deep North." Indeed, considering how this man should drop the theatre as an idle pastime, or as a trade that had filled his coffers, and should quietly sit him down for the remainder of life merely to talk and jest with the Stratford burghers, and, turning over his works to the spoiling hand of blundering printers and surreptitious traffic, regardless of his own reputation, heedless of the world around him, leaving his manuscripts to perish, taking 2 Rep. Men, 215. "8 1 Notes on Shakes., Works, IV. 56. "2 no thought of foreign nations, or the next ages, or as if not deeming he had written anything worthy of preservation, should “steal in silence to his grave,”1 beneath a doggerel epitaph reputed to have been written by himself, and certainly suitable enough for his "bones," by the side of which the knowing friends who erected a monument over him caused to be inscribed a Latin memento, which might indeed do honor to the memory of the "Star of Poets": "Judicio Pylium, genio Socratem, arte Maronem, Terra tegit, populus moret, Olympus habet ";— any man might wonder, if he did not laugh outright, to see this Son of Momus wearing thus his lion's skin even in his tomb. Carlyle, that other master-critic of our time, chewing the cud of this "careless mortal, open to the Universe and its influences, not caring strenuously to open himself; who, Prometheus-like, will scale Heaven (if it so must be), and is satisfied if he therewith pay the rent of his London Play-house," as it were, with the imperturbability of Teufelsdroch himself, simply breaks out, at last, with this brief exclamation: "An unparalleled mortal.” 2 § 5. HIS STUDIES. There is no evidence on record other than that which is drawn from the works themselves, that during his connection with the theatre in London, he was given to profound studies or much reading; and it is evident that no man in his circumstances, conditions, and daily occupations, could have found time, means, and facilities, not merely for supplying the known deficiencies of his previous education, but to make extensive and thorough acquisitions in all departments of human knowledge, and, at the same time, to carry on the work of inventing and writing these extraordinary compositions. If it were to be admitted that he was in fact the author of them, then of course, all the rest should be 1 Mem. of the Court of James I., by Lucy Aiken. 2 Essays (Boston, 1861), III. 211. presumed, however miraculous and inconceivable. There are no certain proofs that he enjoyed the intimacy of literary associates beyond the purlieus of the theatre and cer tain small writers for the stage, Ben Jonson only excepted. Some of his earlier contemporaries, like Greene, made envious attacks upon him, significantly hinting at the incongruity between him and his supposed productions; though numerous other writers and poets of later dates, following the general report, unquestionably recognized him as the admitted author of the works which were attributed to him. He certainly had the acquaintance and friendship of Ben Jonson, who was famous among the literary men of his time, received the countenance of the Court, and enjoyed the intimacy and favor of high literary characters, and particularly of Lord Bacon, in whose service he was engaged for some years. Ben Jonson did not fail to discover "the Star of Poets" in these works; but his description of the person, qualities, genius, and individual characteristics of William Shakespeare, not to speak of his criticisms upon him and the players, do not help to remove the manifest contradiction that exists between the man and the works. The traditions of his having been a member of Raleigh's Club, and his wit-combats at the "Mermaid" (some books say "wet-combats") with Ben Jonson and the assembled wits, will not bear the test of critical examination: they rest, at last, on mere inference from the supposed relations, character, and genius of such an author, and are as baseless in reality as the conceit of worthy old Fuller, proceeding upon the indubitable fact that "his learning was very little," and the old saw," Poeta non fit sed nascitur," that "as Cornish diamonds are not polished by any lapidary, but are pointed and smoothed even as they are taken out of the earth, so Nature itself was all the art that was used upon him." It was a shrewd conjecture of Dr. Maginn, that the reason why we know so little of him is, that "when his 1 1 Worthies of England, III. 284. |