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§ 5. REASONS FOR CONCEALMENT.

With Bacon himself, a desire to rise in the profession of the law, or his ambition for high place in the State, the plan of life he had chosen to follow, the low reputation of a play-writer, in that age, and the mean condition and estate of all poor poets, the need of a larger liberty and a more daring freedom of thought and expression than he could have ventured to take, without some danger to his fortunes, or even to his personal liberty, at times, if it had been known that he was the author of these plays, and more especially, perhaps, a desire that his reputation, both with his contemporaries and with after times, should finally rest upon his acknowledged writings and his philosophical works in particular, as of greater dignity and better becoming his station and the civil honors he sought to attain, in accordance with the ideas of that age, these, not to dwell upon other reasons of a philosophical and critical nature, and of a higher and more disinterested character, are of themselves, perhaps, a sufficient explanation of his wish to cover this authorship, and to remain a concealed poet, in his own time; and especially in the earlier part of his career, when the private arrangement, if it existed, must have been made. In his dedication of the "Colours of Good and Evil" to Lord Mountjoy, in 1595-7, he expressly tells us, that it was his " manner and rule to keep state in contemplative matters." Lord Coke was not alone among those in high places, at that day, whose opinion was, that play - writers and stage-players were fit subjects for the grand jury as "vagrants," and that "the fatal end of these five is beggary, the alchemyst, the monopotext, the concealer, the informer, and the poetaster";1 and as it was, Coke and the like of him took "the liberty to disgrace and disable his law," and constantly sneered at his "book-learning." Even the Queen herself seized upon it as an excuse 1 Campbell's Lives of the Chief Justices, I. 279.

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for refusing him promotion, that "Bacon," as she said, "had a great wit, and much learning, but that in law he could show to the uttermost of his knowledge, and was not deep; " as if inferring the one thing from the other, or as if a man could not know law, and, at the same time, know anything else. In general, it may be admitted that he was in some degree unsuited for a life of executive activity in the administration of affairs. At a later day, he confessed as among the errors of his life "this great one which led the rest, that knowing myself by inward calling to be fitter to hold a book than play a part I have led my life in civil causes, for which I was not very fit by nature, and more unfit by preoccupation of mind.” 1 In the state of things that existed in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. (to be illustrated in the particular history of the play of Richard H.), it will not be difficult to see, that an open avowal of this authorship might have been fatal to all his prospects of elevation in the State, on which he considered the success of his efforts for the advancement of science and the benefit of mankind in a great measure to depend. “But power to do good," he says, "is the true and lawful end of aspiring; for good thoughts (though God accept them), yet towards men are little better than good dreams, except they be put in act; and that cannot be, without power and place as the vantage and commanding ground.”2 The Novum Organum by the Lord Verulam, Lord High Chancellor of England, magnificently dedicated to the King, (having passed "the file of his Majesty's judgment," and been found to be "like the wisdom of God that passeth all understanding,") would attract the attention of Europe; but these plays, the "wanton burthen of the prime,” which could never pass the royal file, must be thrown upon the stage as

"But hope of orphans, and unfather'd fruit."

1 Letter to Bodley.

2 Essay of Great Place.

They had to take their place, and stand trial upon their own merits, in the open theatre; and this he knew they would do, safely enough, and work out their own salvation, at least for the present.

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Towards the close of his life, the scene would be changed, and the matter is to be considered as it would then stand in his view. He is now working in good earnest for the next ages. He will first revise, finish, and republish his former works, and then devote the remainder of life to his greater philosophical labors. He renounces all worldly honors, and mere fame with his contemporaries loses nearly all attraction for him. He seeks a full pardon of his sentence, and a restoration to his seat in the House of Lords, that " a cloud" may be lifted from his name; but when, finally, the summons comes, his answer is: "I have done with such vanities." We have a very distinct intimation in his own words as to what his opinion then was, in respect to fame of this kind; for in his dedicatory epistle to Bishop Andrews, his "ancient and private acquaintance," whom he held in special reverence," prefixed to that Shakespearean "Dialogue touching an Holy War," written in 1622, he gives an explicit account of his writings and purposes. He compares his fortunes to those of Demosthenes, Cicero, and Seneca, and chooses for himself the example of Seneca, like himself, a learned poet, moralist, statesman and philosopher, who, being banished into a solitary island, "spent his time in writing books of excellent argument and use for all ages," having determined, as he says, " (whereunto I was otherwise inclined) to spend my time wholly in writing; and to put forth that poor talent, or half talent, or what it is, that God hath given me, not as heretofore to particular exchanges, but to banks and mounts of perpetuity, which will not break. Therefore, having not long since set forth a part of my Instauration, which is the work, that in mine own judgment (si nunquam fallit imago) I do most esteem, I think to proceed in some new parts thereof.

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I have a purpose therefore (though I break the order of time) to draw it down to the sense, by some patterns of a Natural Story or Inquisition." But besides these natural stories, which were probably to be something like the "New Atlantis," and some other works particularly named, there was still another class, for which the world might "scramble" and "set up a new English inquisition,” and upon which he continues in these words:

"As for my Essays and some other particulars of that nature, I count them but as the recreations of my other studies, and in that sort purpose to continue them; though I am not ignorant that those kind of writings would with less pains and embracement (perhaps) yield more lustre and reputation to my name than those other which I have in hand. But I account the use that a man should seek of the publishing of his own writings before his death, to be but an untimely anticipation of that which is proper to follow a man, and not to go along with him.” 1

Again, speaking of his philosophy in general, he says:"For myself, nothing which is external to the establishment of its principles is of any interest to me. For neither am I a hungerer after fame, nor have I, after the manner of heresiarchs, any ambition to originate a sect; and, as for deriving any private emolument from such labours, I should hold the thought as base as it is ridiculous. Enough for me the consciousness of desert, and that coming accomplishment of real effects which fortune itself shall not be able to intercept." 2

He cares little now for any mere lustre of reputation. It is very possible, of course, that all these expressions had reference only to some other prose compositions of a popular character. They do not necessarily amount to any positive allusion to these plays; but when considered with reference to the entire mass of evidence, which will be pro1 Works (Boston), XIII. 188. * Proœmium, Craik's Bacon, 614.

duced to prove the fact that he was the author of them, it must strike the mind of any reader with the force of a very pregnant suggestion, that he intended (in his own mind, at least,) to include them in the same category with the Essays as among those other unnamed particulars. The work of revising the Essays was continued, and the new and enlarged edition appeared, in 1625. If the Folio of 1623 were printed under his supervision, his part of the work must have been still in progress, if not entirely completed, at the date of this epistle to Bishop Andrews.

His poetical works were in the possession of the world as "Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies," and as "Shakespeare's Sonnets and Poems; and so he would let them remain. They had had their trial already and stood out all appeals, and the wit that was in them could no more be hid than it could be lost. These "feigned histories or speaking pictures," which had for one object, perhaps, "to draw down to the sense" of the theatre and the popular mind things which "flew too high over men's heads" in general, in other forms of delivery, would effectually do their own proper work; and they might be left to take care of themselves. "And there we hope," says the Preface, "to your divers capacities, you will find enough, both to draw, and hold you." For him, not to be understood would be all the same as not to be known: "Read him, therefore, and again and again: And, if then, you do not like him, surely you are in some manifest danger not to understand him." It is certainly conceivable, that a mind like his should care but little for any lustre that might be added to his name, or his memory, by these writings; or, at least, that he should be willing to wait until it should shine forth with an illumination sufficiently brilliant and clear to reveal by its own light the soul and genius of himself. In the mean time, he would take care to keep "the memory of so worthy a Friend and Fellow alive," as this "our Shakespeare" had come to be. The following son

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