He is most deferential to "the honorable men" who had assas And he gives the humble reason: He was my friend, faithful and just to me. And then how cunningly he interjects appeals to the feelings of the mob: He hath brought many captives home to Rome, And how adroitly, and with an ad captandum vulgus argument, he answers the charge that Cæsar was ambitious: You all did see that on the Lupercal I thrice presented him a kingly crown, Which he did thrice refuse. Was this ambition? When that the poor have cried, Cæsar hath wept: And then, protesting that he will not read Cæsar's will, he permits the multitude to know that they are his heirs. And what a world of admiration, in the writer, for Cæsar himself, lies behind these words: Let but the commons hear this testament, (Which, pardon me, I do not mean to read), And they would go and kiss dead Cæsar's wounds, And dip their napkins in his sacred blood; Yea, beg a hair of him for memory, And dying, mention it within their wills, Bequeathing it, as a rich legacy, Unto their issue. Then he pretends to draw back. Citizens. Read the will; we'll hear it, Antony; you shall read us the willCæsar's will. Antony. Will you be patient? Will you stay a while? I have o'ershot myself to tell you of it. And then, at last, encouraged by the voices and cries of the multitude, he snarls out: I fear I wrong the honorable men Ff But before reading the will he descends to uncover the dead body of the great commander; the multitude pressing, with fiery Italian eyes, around him, and glaring over each others' shoulders at the corpse. But first he brings back the memory of Cæsar's magnificent victories: You all do know this mantle: I remember The first time ever Cæsar put it on; 'Twas on a summer's evening, in his tent, That day he overcame the Nervii. Then he plucks away the garment and reveals the hacked and mangled corpse, Marred, as you see, by traitors. And thereupon he gives the details of the assassination, points out and identifies each wound, "poor, poor dumb mouths"; and at last reads the will, and sends the mob forth, raging for revenge, to let slip the dogs of war. Beside this funeral oration all other efforts of human speech are weak, feeble, poverty-stricken and commonplace. Call up your Demosthenes, your Cicero, your Burke, your Chatham, your Grattan, your Webster,- and what are their noblest and loftiest utterances compared with this magnificent production? It is the most consummate eloquence, wedded to the highest poetry, breathing the profoundest philosophy, and sweeping the whole register of the human heart, as if it were the strings of some grand musical instrument, capable of giving forth all forms of sound, from the sob of pity to the howl of fury. It lifts the head of human possibility a whole shoulder-height above the range of ordinary human achieve ment. We find Bacon writing a letter, in 1608-9, to Sir Tobie Matthew, in which he refers back to the time of the death of Elizabeth (1603), and, alluding to a rough draft of his essay, The Felicity of Queen Elizabeth, which Bacon had shown to Sir Tobie, he says : At that time methought you were more willing to hear Julius Cæsar than Elizabeth commended. Bacon, it is known, submitted his acknowledged writings to the criticism of his friend, Sir Tobie; and we can imagine him reading to Sir Tobie, in secret, this grand oration, with all the heat and fervor with which it came from his own mind. And we can imaginė Sir Tobie's delight, touched upon and referred to cunningly in the foregoing playful allusion. What a picture for a great artist that would make : Bacon and Sir Tobie alone in the chamber of Gray's Inn, with the door locked; and Bacon reading, with flashing eyes, to his enraptured auditor, Mark Antony's oration over the dead body of Julius Cæsar. XI. OTHER STUDIES. But, in whatever direction we turn, we find the writer of the Plays and Francis Bacon devoting themselves to the same pursuits. Bacon in The New Atlantis discusses the possibility of there being discovered in the future "some perpetual motions"—a curious thought and a curious study for that age. Shakespeare makes Falstaff say to the Chief Justice: I were better to be eaten to death with rust, than to be scoured to nothing with perpetual motion.1 Bacon says: Snow-water is held unwholesome; inasmuch as the people that dwell at the foot of the snow mountains, or otherwise upon the ascent, especially the women, by drinking snow-water have great bags hanging under their throats.? Who would believe that there were mountaineers Dew-lapped like bulls, whose throats had hanging at them Shakespeare was familiar with the works of Machiavel, and alludes to him in The Merry Wives of Windsor, in 1st Henry VI. and in 3d Henry VI. Bacon had studied his writings, and refers to him in The Advancement of Learning, book ii, and in many other places. Shakespeare was a great observer of the purity of the air. He says in Macbeth: This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air And Bacon says: I would wish you to observe the climate and the temperature of the air; for so you shall judge of the healthfulness of the place.4 12d Henry IV., i, 2. 2 Natural History, § 396. 3 Tempest, iii, 3. 4 Letter to the Earl of Rutland, written in the name of the Earl of Essex-Life and Works, vol. ii, p. 19. Bacon also says: The heart receiveth benefit or harm most from the air we breathe, from vapors and from the affections.1 One has only to read the works of Francis Bacon to see that they abound in quotations from and references to the Bible. He had evidently made the Scriptures the subject of close and thor ough study. On the other hand, the Rev. Charles Wordsworth says: Take the entire range of English literature, put together our best authors who have written upon subjects professedly not religious or theological, and we shall not find, I believe, in all united, so much evidence of the Bible having been read and used as we have found in Shakespeare alone. We have already seen that both the author of the Plays and Francis Bacon had studied law, and had read even the obscure law-reports of Plowden, printed in the still more obscure blackletter and Norman French. In fact, I might swell this chapter beyond all reasonable bounds by citing instance after instance, to show that the writer of the Plays studied precisely the same books that Francis Bacon did; and, in the chapter on Identical Quotations, I have shown that he took out of those books exactly the same particular facts and thoughts which had adhered to the memory of Francis Bacon. It is difficult in this world to find two men who agree in devoting themselves not to one, but to a multitude of the same studies; and rarer still to find two men who will be impressed alike with the same particulars in those studies. But let us move forward a step farther in the argument. History of Life and Death. CHAPTER VI. IDENTICAL ERRORS. Lend thy serious hearing to what I shall unfold. Hamlet, i, 5. HE list of coincident errors must necessarily be brief. THE We can not include the errors common to all men in that age, for those would prove nothing. And the mistakes of so accurate and profound a man as Francis Bacon are necessarily few in number. But if we find any errors peculiar to Francis Bacon repeated in Shakespeare, it will go far to settle the question of identity. For different men may read the same books and think the same thoughts, but it is unusual, in fact, extraordinary, if they fall into the same mistakes. I. BOTH MISQUOTE ARISTOTLE. Mr. Spedding noticed the fact that Bacon in The Advancement of Learning had erroneously quoted Aristotle as saying "that young men are no fit auditors of moral philosophy," because "they are not settled from the boiling heat of their affections, nor attempered with time and experience"; while, in truth, Aristotle speaks, in the passage referred to by Bacon, of "political philosophy." Mr. Spedding further noted that this precise error of confounding moral with political philosophy had been followed by Shakespeare. In Troilus and Cressida the two "young men," Paris and Troilus, had given their opinion that the Trojans should keep possession of the fair Helen. To which Hector replies: Paris and Troilus, you have both said well; And what reason did Bacon give why young men were not fit to hear moral philosophy? Because "they are not settled from the 1 Troilus and Cressida, ii, 2. |