particulars untrue. It is unsatisfactory because it is not · harmonious or consistent, for in one place it is frankly stated that "Nature gives no man knowledge." Whereas, further on, we are given to understand that Shakespeare's own powers of observation were sufficient to furnish him with "an exact knowledge" of character in the personages whom he portrays.

Further, the passage, if applied to the man Shaksper, is untrue. He is assumed to have inaugurated the study of Nature and Human Nature, "having none to imitate; whereas, we know that the study was new with Bacon, who mentions it as a deficiency in learning, and who gives directions as to the way in which the study should be conducted, and the particulars to be observed. Vainly have critics and commentators endeavoured to marry the life of Shaksper to his supposed works, by suggesting that he may have been a school-teacher, must have picked up his law at ordinaries or as a lawyer's clerk, and that his knowledge of courtly life and manners were probably learned by peeping from behind the scenes into the throng of royal or noble personages who formed his audience.

Is it in ways such as these that any man ever attained, or could attain, to the highest or most profound knowledge in every known branch of learning or science-to the law of an Attorney-General or a Chancellor, or to a perfect mastery of the manners, discourse, and ceremonials on State occasions, in privy councils, meetings of kings and ambassadors, consultations of bishops and clergy, or of death-bed scenes of kings and nobles, royal betrothals, and such like? Such notions are too puerile and absurd to be for an instant entertained by

any thoughtful mind. They would surely never have arisen, or been tolerated by sane persons, were it not for the singular fact, that such is the fascination exercised by the name "Shakespeare," that even now, when truth has come to light, there are still many people who would prefer to cast reason to the dogs, to smother up truth, and to defy common-sense and experience, rather than believe that William Shaksper was, as Shakspeareans have proved, a graceless fellow, and that the name Shakespeare was adopted under stress of necessity, and as a safe nom-de-plume, by the great poet-philosopher— Francis Bacon.

MANNERS, MIND, MORALS.

ADVERSITY.

"It was a high speech of Seneca, that the good things which belong to Prosperity are to be wished, but the good things which belong to Adversity are to be studied." -Ess. of Adversity.

"Happy is your Grace,

That can translate the stubbornness of fortune
Into so quiet and so sweet a style."

1. Lord:

-As You Like It ii. 1.

66

A poor sequestered stag

Duke:

That from the hunter's aim had taken a hurt,

...

Did come to languish, . . . and thus the hairy fool,
Much marked of the melancholy Jaques,

Stood on the extremest verge of the swift brook,
Augmenting it with tears."

"But what said Jaques ?

Did he not moralise this spectacle?"

1. Lord: "O! yes, into a thousand smiles . .

Duke: "And did you leave him in this contemplation?" 1. Lord: "We did, my lord, weeping, and commenting Upon the sobbing deer."

(See the whole passage with Jaques' studies of human nature in the experience of the deer.-As You Like It ii. 1, 25-68).

ADVERSITY-Men's Almost Miraculous Endurance.

66

Certainly, if miracles be the command over nature, they appear most in adversity."—Ess. of Adversity.

"And him,-0 wondrous him!

O miracle of men! him did you leave
To look upon this hideous God of War
In disadvantage," &c.-2 Hen. IV. ii. 3.

"Nothing almost sees miracles, but misery."

-Lear ii. 2.

ADVERSITY-PROSPERITY. (See Evil-Good.)

66

Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament, adversity is the blessing of the New, which carrieth the greater benediction, and the clearer revelation of God's favour. Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes, and adversity is not without comforts and hopes."-Ess. of Adversity.

to be good for them that bleed at the nose,

if the stone taken out of the toad's head be not of the like. virtue."-Nat. Hist. Cent. x. 967.)

* Advice-See Counsel.

Anxiety-See Care.

"Virtue is like precious odours, most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed; for prosperity doth best discover vice; but adversity doth best discover virtue."Ess. of Adversity.

Comp.: "Though the camomile, the more it is trodden on the faster it grows, yet youth, the more it is wasted the sooner it wears."-1 Hen. IV. ii. 4.

"A wretched soul bruised in adversity."-Com. Err. ii. 1. Blanche: "The Lady Constance speaks not from her faith, But from her need."

Const.:

"O! if thou grant my need,
Which only lives by the death of faith,
That need must needs infer this principle

That faith should live again by death of need:
O! then, tread down my need, and faith mounts up;
Keep my need up, and faith is trodden down."

-John iii. 1.

The following are examples of the many ways in which Bacon, by antithesis, combines jest and satire as to produce a sense of the comic whilst uttering a truth :

"Welcome the cup of sour prosperity! Affliction may one day smile again, and, till then, sit thee down, sorrow !"—Love's Labour's Lost i. 2.

Alcib. "I have heard in some sort of thy miseries."
Tim. "Thou saw'st them when I had prosperity."
Alcib.: "I see them now; then was a blessed time."
Tim.: "As thine is now, held with a brace of harlots," &c.

"I am thinking what I shall say

Tim. Ath. iv. 3.

It must be a personating

of himself: a satire against the softness of prosperity, with a discovery of the infinite flatteries that follow youth and opulency."-—Tim. Ath. v. 1.