'O where, alack!
Shall time's best jewel from time's chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
O none, unless this miracle [this miracle] have might,
that in black ink– '
Is this printer's ink? Or is it the ink of the prompter's book? or the fading ink of those loose papers, so soon to be 'yellowed with age,' scattered about no one knew where, that some busy-body, who had nothing else to do, might perhaps take it into his head to save?
'O none, unless this miracle' – THIS MIRACLE, the rejoicing scholar and man of letters, who was not for an age, but for all time, cries – defying tyranny, laughing at princes' edicts, reaching into his own great assured futurity across the gulfs of civil war, planting his feet upon that sure ground, and singing songs of triumph over the spent tombs of brass and tyrants' crests; like that orator who was to make an oration in public, and found himself a little straitened in time to fit his words to his mouth as he had a mind to do, when Eros, one of his slaves, brought him word that the audience was deferred till the next day; at which he was so ravished with joy, that he enfranchised him. 'This miracle.' He knows what miracles are, for he has told us; but none other knew what miracle this was that he is celebrating here with all this wealth of symphonies.
'O none, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.'
['My love,' – wait till you know what it is, and do not think to know with the first or second reading of poems, that are on the surface of them scholastic, academic, mystical, obtrusively enigmatical. Perhaps, after all, it is that Eros who was enfranchised, emancipated.]
'But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest [thou owes!],
Nor shall death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to – thee!
But here is our prophecy, which we have undertaken to read with the aid of this collation: —
'When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry;
Nor Mars his sword, nor war's quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
'Gainst death, and all oblivious enmity,
Shall YOU pace forth. Your praise shall still find room,
Even in the eyes [collateral sounds] of all posterity,
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the JUDGMENT that YOURSELF arise [till then],
You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.'
See the passages at the commencement of this chapter, if there be any doubt as to this reading.
'In lover's eyes.'
Leonatus Posthumus. Shall's have a Play of this? Thou scornful Page, There lie thy part. [To Imogen disguised as Fidele.]
The consideration which qualified, in the mind of the Author of the Advancement of Learning, the great difficulty which the question of civil government presented at that time, is the key to this 'plot.' For men, and not 'Romans' only, 'are like sheep;' and if you can but get some few to go right, the rest will follow. That was the plan. To create a better leadership of men, – to form a new order and union of men, – a new nobility of men, acquainted with the doctrine of their own nature, and in league for its advancement, to seize the 'thoughts' of those whose law is the law of the larger activity, and 'inform them with nobleness,' – was the plan.
For these the inner school was opened; for these its ascending platforms were erected. For these that 'closet' and 'cabinet,' where the 'simples' of the Shake-spear philosophy are all locked and labelled, was built. For these that secret 'cabinet of the Muses,' where the Delphic motto is cut anew, throws out its secret lures, – its gay, many-coloured, deceiving lures, – its secret labyrinthine clues, – for all lines in this building meet in that centre. All clues here unwind to that. For these – for the minds on whom the continuation of this enterprise was by will devolved, the key to that cabinet – the historical key to its inmost compartment of philosophic mysteries, was carefully laboured and left, – pointed to – pointed to with immortal gesticulations, and left ('What I cannot speak, I point out with my finger'); the key to that 'Verulamian cabinet,' which we shall hear of when the fictitious correspondence in which the more secret history of this time was written, comes to be opened. That cabinet where the subtle argument that was inserted in the Poem or the Play, but buried there in its gorgeous drapery, is laid bare in prose as subtle ('I here scatter it up and down indifferently for verse'); where the new truth that was spoken in jest, as well as in parables, to those who were without, is unfolded, – that truth which moved unseen amid the gambols of the masque, – preferring to raise questions rather than objections, – which stalked in, without suspicion, in 'the hobby-horse' of the clown, – which the laugh of the groundlings was so often in requisition to cover, – that 'to beguile the time looked like the time,' – that 'looked like the flower, and was the serpent under it.'
For these that secret place of confidential communication was provided, where 'the argument' of all these Plays is opened without respect to the 'offence in it,' – to its utmost reach of abstruseness and subtlety – in its utmost reach of departure from 'the road of common opinion,' – where the Elizabethan secrets of Morality, and Policy and Religion, which made the Parables of the New Doctrine, are unrolled, at last, in all the new, artistic glories of that 'wrapped up' intention. This is the second use of the Fable in which we resume that dropped argument, – dropped for that time, while Caesar still commanded his thirty legions; and when the question, 'How long to philosophise?' being started in the schools again, the answer returned still was, 'Until our armies cease to be commanded by fools.' This is that second use of the Fable where we find the moral of it at last, – that moral which our moralists have missed in it, – that moral which is not 'vulgar and common-place,' but abstruse, and out of the road of common opinion, – that moral in which the Moral Science, which is the Wisdom of the Moderns, lurks.
It is to these that the Wise Man of our ages speaks (for we have him, – we do not wait for him), in the act of displaying a little, and folding up for the future, his plan of a Scientific Human Culture; it is to these that he speaks when he says, with a little of that obscurity which 'he mortally hates, and would avoid if he could': 'As Philocrates sported with Demosthenes,' you may not marvel, Athenians, that Demosthenes and I do differ, for he drinketh water, and I drink wine; and like as we read of an ancient parable of the two gates of sleep '… so if we put on sobriety and attention, we shall find it a sure maxim in knowledge, that the pleasant liquor of wine is the more vaporous, and the braver gate of ivory sendeth forth the falser dreams.' ['I,' says 'Michael,' who is also in favour of 'sobriety,' and critical upon excesses of all kinds, 'I have ever observed, that super-celestial theories and sub-terranean manners are in singular accordance.']
And in his general proposal to lay open 'those parts of learning which lie fresh and waste, and not improved and converted by the industry of man, to the end that such a plot, made and committed to memory, may both minister light to any public designation, and also serve to excite voluntary endeavours,' he says, 'I do foresee that of those things which I shall enter and register as deficiencies and omissions, many will conceive and censure that some of them are already done, and extant, others to be but curiosities and things of no great use' [such as the question of style, for instance, and those 'particular' arts of tradition to which this remark is afterwards applied] – and others to be of too great difficulty – and almost impossibility – to be compassed and effected; but for the two first, I refer myself to particulars; for the last, – touching impossibility, – I take it those things are to be held possible, which may be done by some person, though not by every one; and which may be done by many, though not by any one; and which may be done in succession of ages, though not within the hour-glass of one man's life; and which may be done by public designation, though not by private endeavour.
That was 'the plot' – that was the plan of the Elizabethan Innovation.
THE ENIGMA OF LEONATUS POSTHUMUS
'When as a lion's whelp shall, to himself unknown, without seeking find, and be embraced by a piece of tender air; and when from a stately cedar shall be lopped branches, which, being dead many years, shall after revive, be jointed to the old stock, and freshly grow; then shall Posthumus end his miseries, Britain be fortunate, and flourish in peace and plenty.'
THE VERULAMIAN CABINET, AND ITS WORKMANSHIP
Here, for instance, is a specimen of the manner in which scholars who write about these times, allude to the reserved parts of this philosophy, and to those 'richer and bolder meanings,' which could not then be inserted in the acknowledged writings of so great a person. This is a specimen of the manner in which a posthumous collection and reintegration of this philosophy, and a posthumous emancipation of it, is referred to, by scholars who write from the Continent somewhere about these days. Whether the date of the writing be a little earlier or a little later, – some fifty years or so, – it does not seem to make much difference as to the general intent and purport of it.
Here is a scholar, for instance, whose main idea of life on this planet it appears to be, to collect the philosophy, and protect the posthumous fame of the Lord Bacon. For this purpose, he has established a literary intimacy, quite the most remarkable one on record – at least, between scholars of different and remote nationalities – between himself and two English gentlemen, a Mr. Smith, and the Rev. Dr. Rawley. He writes from the Hague but he appears to have acquired in some way a most extraordinary insight into this business.
'Though I thought that I had already sufficiently showed what veneration I had for the illustrious Lord Verulam, yet I shall take such care for the future, that it may not possibly be denied, that I endeavoured most zealously to make this thing known to the learned world. But neither shall this design of setting forth in one volume all the Lord Bacon's works, proceed without consulting you' – [This letter is addressed to the Rev. Dr. Rawley, and is dated a number of years after Lord Bacon's death] – 'without consulting you, and without inviting you to cast in your symbol, worthy such an excellent edition: that so the appetite of the reader' – [It was a time when symbols of various kinds – large and small – were much in use in the learned world] – 'that so the appetite of the reader, provoked already by his published works, may be further gratified by the pure novelty of so considerable an appendage.
'For the French interpreter, who patched together his things I know not whence, and tacked that motley piece to him; they shall not have place in this great collection. But yet I hope to obtain your leave to publish a-part, as an appendix to the Natural History, —that exotic work, —gathered together from this and the other place (of his lordship's writings), [that is the true account of it] and by me translated into —Latin.
'For seeing the genuine pieces of the Lord Bacon are already extant, and in many hands, it is necessary that the foreign reader be given to understand of what threads the texture of that book consists, and how much of truth there is in that which that shameless person does, in his preface to the reader, so stupidly write of you.
'My brother, of blessed memory, turned his words into Latin, in the First Edition of the Natural History, having some suspicion of the fidelity of an unknown author. I will, in the Second Edition, repeat them, and with just severity animadvert upon them: that they, into whose hands that work comes, may know it to be rather patched up of many distinct pieces; how much soever the author bears himself upon the specious title of Verulam. Unless, perhaps, I should particularly suggest in your name, that these words were there inserted, by way of caution; and lest malignity and rashness should any way blemish the fame of so eminent a person.
'If my fate would permit me to live according to my wishes, I would fly over into England, that I might behold whatsoever remaineth in your Cabinet of the Verulamian workmanship, and at least make my eyes witnesses of it, if the possession of the merchandise be yet denied to the public. At present I will support the wishes of my impatient desire, with hope of seeing, one day, those (issues) which being committed to faithful privacy, wait the time till they may safely see the light, and not be stifled in their birth.
'I wish, in the mean time, I could have a sight of the copy of the Epistle to Sir Henry Savil, concerning the Helps of the Intellectual Powers: for I am persuaded, as to the other Latin remains, that I shall not obtain,for present use, the removal of them from the place in which they now are.'
Extract of a letter from Mr. Isaac Gruter. Here is the beginning of it: —
'TO THE REV. WM. RAWLEY, D.D
'Isaac Gruter wisheth much health.
'Reverend Sir, – It is not just to complain of the slowness of your answer, seeing that the difficulty of the passage, in the season in which you wrote, which was towards winter, might easily cause it to come no faster; seeing likewise there is so much to be found in it which may gratify desire, and perhaps so much the more, the longer it was ere it came to my hands. And although I had little to send back, besides my thanks for the little Index, yet that seemed to me of such moment that I would no longer suppress them: especially because I accounted it a crime to have suffered Mr. Smith to have been without an answer: Mr. Smith, my most kind friend, and to whose care, in my matters, I owe all regard and affection, yet without diminution of that (part and that no small one neither) in which Dr. Rawley hath place. So that the souls of us three, so throughly agreeing, may be aptly said to have united in a triga.'
It is not necessary, of course, to deny the historical claims of the Rev. Dr. Rawley, who is sufficiently authenticated; or even of Mr. Smith himself, who would no doubt be able to substantiate himself, in case a particular inquiry were made for him; and it would involve a serious departure from the method of invention usually employed in this association, which did not deal with shadows when contemporary instrumentalities were in requisition, if the solidarity of Mr. Isaac Gruter himself should admit of a moment's question. The precautions of this secret, but so powerful league, – the skill with which its instrumentalities were selected and adapted to its ends, is characterised by that same matchless dramatic power, which betrays 'the source from which it springs' even when it 'only plays at working.'
But if any one is anxious to know who the third person of this triga really was, or is, a glance at the Directory would enable such a one to arrive at a truer conclusion than the first reading of this letter would naturally suggest. For this is none other than the person whom the principle of this triga, and its enlightened sentiment and bond of union, already symbolically comprehended, whom it was intended to comprehend ultimately in all the multiplicity and variety of his historical manifestations, though it involved a deliberate plan for reducing and suppressing his many-headedness, and restoring him to the use of his one only mind. For though the name of this person is often spelt in three letters, and oftener in one, it takes all the names in the Directory to spell it in full. For this is none other than the person that 'Michael' refers to so often and with so much emphasis, glancing always at his own private name, and the singular largeness and comprehensiveness of his particular and private constitution. 'All the world knows me in my book, and my book in me.' 'I, the first of any, by my universal being. Every man carries with him the entire form of human condition.'
But the name of Mr. Isaac Gruter was not less comprehensive, and could be made to represent the whole triga in an emergency, as well as another; ['I take so great pleasure in being judged and known that it is almost indifferent to me in which of the two forms I am so'] though that does not hinder him from inviting Dr. Eawley to cast in his symbol, which was 'so considerable an appendage.' For though the very smallest circle sometimes represents it, it was none other than the symbol that gave name to the theatre in which the illustrated works of this school were first exhibited; the theatre which hung out for its sign on the outer wall, 'Hercules and his load too.' At a time when 'conceits' and 'devices in letters,' when anagrams and monograms, and charades, and all kinds of 'racking of orthography' were so much in use, not as curiosities merely, but to avoid another kind of 'racking,' a cipher referred to in this philosophy as the 'wheel cipher,' which required the letters of the alphabet to be written in a circle to serve as a key to the reading, supplies a clue to some of these symbols. The first three letters of the alphabet representing the whole in the circle, formed a character or symbol which was often made to stand as a 'token' for a proper name, easily spelt in that way, when phonography and anagrams were in such lively and constant use, – while it made, at the same time, a symbolical representation of the radical doctrine of the new school in philosophy, – a school then so new, that its 'Doctors' were compelled to 'pray in the aid of simile,' even in affixing their names to their own works, in some cases. And that same letter which was capable of representing in this secret language either the microcosm, or 'the larger whole,' as the case required (either with, or without the eye or I in it, sending rays to the circumference) sufficed also to spell the name of the Grand Master of this lodge, – 'who also was a man, take him for all in all,' – the man who took two hemispheres for 'his symbol.' That was the so considerable appendage which his friend alludes to, – though 'the natural gaiety of disposition,' of which we have so much experience in other places, and which the gravity of these pursuits happily does not cloud, suggests a glance in passing at another signification, which we find alluded to also in another place in Mrs. Quickly's 'Latin.' Mere frivolities as these conceits and private and retired arts seem now, the Author of the Advancement of Learning tells us, that to those who have spent their labours and studies in them, they seem great matters, referring particularly to that cipher in which it is possible to write omnia per omnia, and stopping to fasten the key of it to his 'index' of 'the principal and supreme sciences,' – those sciences 'which being committed to faithful privacy, wait the time when they may safely see the light, and not be stifled in their birth.'
New constructions, according to true definitions, was the plan, – this triga was the initiative.
CHAPTER XII
THE IGNORANT ELECTION REVOKED. – A WRESTLING INSTANCE
'For as they were men of the best composition in the state of Rome, which, either being consuls, inclined to the people' ['If he would but incline to the people, there never was a worthier man'], 'or being tribunes, inclined to the senate, so, in the matter which we handle now [doctrine of Cure], they be the best physicians which, being learned, incline to the traditions of experience; or, being empirics, incline to the methods of learning.' Advancement of Learning.
But while the Man of Science was yet planning these vast scientific changes – vast, but noiseless and beautiful as the movements of God in nature – there was another kind of revolution brewing. All that time there was a cloud on his political horizon – 'a huge one, a black one' – slowly and steadfastly accumulating, and rolling up from it, which he had always an eye on. He knew there was that in it which no scientific apparatus that could be put in operation then, on so short a notice, and when science was so feebly aided, would be able to divert or conduct entirely. He knew that so fearful a war-cloud would have to burst, and get overblown, before any chance for those peace operations, those operations of a solid and lasting peace, which he was bent on, could be had – before any space on the earth could be found broad enough for his Novum Organum to get to work on, before the central levers of it could begin to stir.
That revolution which 'was singing in the wind' then to his ear, was one which would have to come first in the chronological order; but it was easy enough to see that it was not going to be such a one, in all respects, as a man of his turn of genius would care to be out in with his works.
He knew well enough what there was in it. He had not been so long in such sharp daily collision with the elements of it – he had not been so long trying conclusions with them under such delicate conditions, conditions requiring so nice an observation – without arriving at some degree of assurance in regard to their main properties, without attaining, indeed, to what he calls knowledge on that subject – knowledge as distinguished from opinion – so as to be able to predict 'with a near aim' the results of the possible combinations. The conclusion of this observation was, that the revolutionary movements then at hand were not, on the whole, likely to be conducted throughout on rigidly scientific principles.
The spectacle of a people violently 'revoking their ignorant election,' and empirically seeking to better their state under such leaders as such a movement was likely to throw up, and that, too, when the old military government was still so strong in moral forces, so sure of a faction in the state – of a faction of the best, which would cleave the state to the centre, which would resist with the zealot's fire unto blood and desperation the unholy innovation – that would stand on the last plank of the wrecked order, and wade through seas of slaughter to restore it; the prospect of untried political innovation, under such circumstances, did not present itself to this Poet's imagination in a form so absolutely alluring, as it might have done to a philosopher of a less rigidly inductive, turn of mind.
His canvas, with its magic draught of the coming event, includes already some contingencies which the programme of the theoretical speculator in revolutions would have been far enough from including then, when such movements were yet untried in modern history, and the philosopher had to go back to mythical Rome to borrow an historical frame of one that would contain his piece. The conviction that the crash was, perhaps, inevitable, that the overthrow of the existing usurpation, and the restoration of the English subject to his rights, – a movement then already determined on, – would perhaps involve these so tragic consequences – the conviction that the revolution was at hand, was the conviction with which he made his arrangements for the future.
But if any one would like to see now for himself what vigorous grasp of particulars this inductive science of state involves, what a clear, comprehensive, and masterly basis of history it rests on, and how totally unlike the philosophy of prenotions it is in this respect – if one would see what breadth of revolutionary surges this Artist of the peace principles was able to span with his arches and sleepers, what upheavings from the then unsounded depths of political contingencies, what upliftings from the last depths of the revolutionary abysses, this science of stability, this science of the future STATE, is settled on, – such a one must explore this work yet further, and be able to find and unroll in it that revolutionary picture which it contains – that scientific exhibition which the Elizabethan statesman has contrived to fold in it of a state in which the elements are already cleaving and separating, one in which the historical solidities are already in solution, or struggling towards it – prematurely, perhaps, and in danger of being surprised and overtaken by new combinations, not less oppressive and unscientific than the old.
'Unless philosophy can make a Juliet,
Displant a town, reverse a prince's doom,
Hang up philosophy' —
wrote this Poet's fire of old.
'Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased?'
it writes again. No?
'Throw physic to the dogs, I'll none of it.'
'See now what learning is,' says the practical-minded nurse, quite dazzled and overawed with that exhibition of it which has just been brought within her reach, and expressing, in the readiest and largest terms which her vocabulary supplies to her, her admiration of the practical bent of Friar Laurence's genius; who seems to be doing his best to illustrate the idea which another student, who was not a Friar exactly, was undertaking to demonstrate from his cell about that time – the idea of the possibility of converging a large and studious observation of nature in general, – and it is a very large and curious one which this Friar betrays, – upon any of those ordinary questions of domestic life, which are constantly recurring for private solution. And though this knowledge might seem to be 'so variable as it falleth not under precept,' the prose philosopher is of the opinion that 'a universal insight, and a wisdom of council and advice, gathered by general observation of cases of like nature,' is available for the particular instances which occur in this department. And the philosophic poet appears to be of his opinion; for there is no end to the precepts which he inducts from this 'variable knowledge' when he gets it on his table of review, in the form of natural history, in 'prerogative cases' and 'illustrious instances,' cases cleared from their accidental and extraneous adjuncts – ideal cases. And though this poor Friar does not appear to have been very successful in this particular instance; if we take into account the fact that 'the Tragedy was the thing,' and that nothing but a tragedy would serve his purpose, and that all his learning was converged on that effect; if we take into account the fact that this is a scientific experiment, and that the characters are sacrificed for the sake of the useful conclusions, the success will not perhaps appear so questionable as to throw any discredit upon this new theory of the applicability of learning to questions of this nature.
'Unless philosophy can make a Juliet.' But this is the philosophy that did that very thing, and the one that made a Hamlet also, besides 'reversing a prince's doom'; for this is the one that takes into account those very things in heaven and earth which Horatio had omitted in his abstractions; and this is the philosopher who speaks from his philosophic chair of 'men of good composition,' and who gives a recipe for composing them. 'Unless philosophy can make a Juliet,' is Romeo's word. 'See now what learning is,' is the Nurse's commentary; for that same Friar, demure as he looks now under his hood, talking of 'simples' and great nature's latent virtues, is the one that will cog the nurse's hearts from them, and come back beloved of all the trades in Rome. With his new art of 'composition' he will compose, not Juliets nor Hamlets only; mastering the radicals, he will compose, he will dissolve and recompose ultimately the greater congregation; for the powers in nature are always one, and they are not many.
Let us see now, then, what it is, – this 'universal insight in the affairs of the world,' this 'wisdom of counsel and advice, gathered from cases of a like nature,' with an observation that includes all natures, – let us see what this new wisdom of counsel is, when it comes to be applied to this huge growth of the state, this creature of the ages; and in its great crisis of disorder – shaken, convulsed – wrapped in elemental horror, and threatening to dissolve into its primal warring atoms.
'Doctor, the Thanes fly from me.'
'If thou couldst, Doctor, cast
The water of MY LAND, find her disease,
And purge it to a sound and pristine health,
I would applaud thee to the very echo,
That should applaud again.'
'What rhubarb, senna, or what purgative drug,
Would scour these English hence? Hear'st thou of them?'
'Cousins, I hope the days are near at hand
That chambers will be safe.'
Let us see, then, what it is that this man will have, who criticises so severely the learning of other men, – who disposes so scornfully, right and left, of the physic and metaphysic of the schools as he finds them, – who daffs the learning of the world aside, and bids it pass. Let us see what the learning is that is not 'words,' as Hamlet says, complaining of the reading in his book.
This part has been taken out from its dramatic connections, and reserved for a separate exhibition, on account of a certain new and peculiar value it has acquired since it was produced in those connections. Time has changed it 'into something rich and strange,' – Time has framed it, and poured her illustration on it: it is history now. That flaming portent, this aurora that fills the seer's heaven, these fierce angry warriors, that are fighting here upon the clouds, 'in ranks, and squadrons, and right forms of war,' are but the marvels of that science that lays the future open.
'There is a history in all men's lives,
Figuring the nature of the times deceased;
The which observed, a man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life, which, in their seeds
And weak beginnings, lie intreasured.
Such things become the hatch and brood of time.'
'One need not go to heaven to predict imminent changes and revolutions,' says that other philosopher, who scribbles on this same subject about these days in such an entertaining manner, and who brings so many 'buckets' from 'the headspring of sciences,' to water his plants in this field in particular. 'That which most threatens us is a divulsion of the whole mass.'