Reason cannot be so sensible, nor examples so fit.Advancement of Learning.
The object of this Volume is merely to openas a study, and a study of primary consequence, those great Works of the Modern Learning which have passed among us hitherto, for lack of the historical and scientific key to them, as Works of Amusement, merely.
But even in that superficial acquaintance which we have had with them in that relation, they have, all the time, been subtly operating upon the minds in contact with them, and perpetually fulfilling the first intention of their Inventor.
'For,' says the great Innovator of the Modern Ages,—the author of theNovumOrganum, and of theAdvancementof Learning,—in claiming this department of Letters as the necessary and proper instrumentality of a new science,—of a science at least, 'foreign to opinions received,'—as he claims elsewhere that it is, under all conditions, the inevitable essential form of this science in particular. 'Men have proposed to answer two different and contrary ends by the use of parables, for they serve as well toinstructandillustrateas towrap up and envelope, so that, though for the present, we drop the concealed use, and suppose them to bevague undeterminate things, formed for AMUSEMENT merely, still the otheruseremains. 'And every man ofanylearning must readily concede,' he says, 'the value of that use of them as a method of popular instruction, grave, sober, exceedingly useful, and sometimes necessary in thesciences, as it opens an easy andfamiliarpassage to the human understandings inall newdiscoveries, that are abstruse and out of the road of vulgar opinion. They were used of old byphilosophersto express any point of reason more sharp and subtle than the vulgar, and neverthelessnow, andat all times, these allusive parabolical forms retain much life and vigor, becausereasoncannot beso sensiblenorexamples so fit.' That philosophic use of them was to inform and teach, whilst the minds of men continued rude and unpractised in matters of subtilty and speculation, and even impatient and in a manner incapable of receiving anything that did not directly fall under and strike the senses. 'And, even to this day, if any man would let new light in upon the human understanding, and conquer prejudices without raising animosities, opposition, ordisturbance, he must still go inthe same pathand have recourse to the like method.'
That is the use which the History and Fables of the New Philosophy have alreadyhadwith us. We have been feeding without knowing it, on the 'principal and supreme sciences'—the 'Prima Philosophia' and its noblest branches. We have been taking the application of the Inductive Philosophy to the principal concerns of our human life, and to the phenomena of of the human nature itself, as mere sport and pastime; though the precepts concluded, the practical axioms inclosed with it have already forced their way into our learning, for all our learning is, even now, inlaid and glittering with those 'dispersed directions.'
We have profited by this use of them. It has not been pastime merely with us. We have not spent our time in vain on this first stage of an Advancing Learning, a learning that will not cease to advance until it has invaded all our empiricisms, and conquered all our practice; a learning that will recompence the diligence, the exactitude, the severity of observance which it will require here also (when it comes to put in its claim here, as Learning and not Amusement merely), with that same magnitude of effects that, in other departments, has already justified the name which its Inventor gave it—a Learning which will give us here, also, in return for the severity of observance it will require, what no ceremonial, however exacting can give us, that control of effects, with which, even in its humblest departments, it has already fulfilled, in the eyes of all the world, the prophecy which its Inventors uttered when they called it the NEW MAGIC.
That first use of the Histories and Fables of the Modern Learning, we have had already; and it is not yet exhausted. But in that rapid development of a common intelligence, to which the new science of practice has itself so largely contributed, even in its lower and limited developments, we come now to that other and so important use of these Fables, which the philosophic Innovator proposed to drop for the time, in his argument—that use of them, in which they serve 'to wrap up and conceal' for the time, or to limit to the few, who are able to receive them, those new discoveries which are as yet too far in advance of the common beliefs and opinions of men, and too far above the mental habits and capacities of the masses of men, to be safely or profitably communicated to the many in the abstract.
But in order to arrive at this second and nobler use of them, it will be necessary to bestow on them a very different kind of study from any that we have naturally thought it worth while to spend on them, so long as we regarded them as works of pastime merely; and especially while that insuperable obstacle to any adequate examination of them, which the received history of the works themselves created, was still operating on the criticism. The truths which these Parabolic and Allusive Poems wrap up and conceal, have been safely concealed hitherto, because they are not those common-place truths which we usually look for as the point and moral of a tale which is supposed to have a moral or politic intention,—truths which we are understood to be in possession of beforehand, while the parable or instance is only designed to impress the sensibility with them anew, and to reach the will that would not take them from the reason, by means of the senses or the imagination. It is not that spontaneous, intuitive knowledge, or those conventional opinions, those unanalysed popular beliefs, which we usually expect to find without any trouble at all, on the very surface of any work that has morality for its object, it is not any such coarse, lazy performance as that, that we need trouble ourselves to look for here. This higher intention in these works 'their real import, genuine interpretation, and full depth,' has not yet been found,becausethe science which is wrapped in them, though it is the principal science in the plan of the Advancement of Learning, has hitherto escaped our notice, andbecauseof the exceeding subtlety of it,—because the truths thus conveyed or concealed are new, and recondite, and out of the way of any casual observation,—because in this scientific collection of the phenomena of the human life, designed to serve as the basis of new social arts and rules of practice, the author has had occasion to go behind the vague, popular, unscientific terms which serve well enough for purposes of discourse, and mere oratory, to those principles which are actual and historical, those simple radical forms and differences on which the doctrine of power and practice must be based.
It is pastime no longer. It is a study, the most patient, the most profoundly earnest to which these works now invite us. Let those who will, stay in the playground still, and make such sport and pastime of it there, as they may; and let those who feel the need of inductive rules here also,—here on the ground which this pastime covers—let those who perceive that we have as yet, set our feet only on the threshold of the Great Instauration, find here with diligent research, the ascent to the axioms of practice,—that ascent which the author of the science of practice in general, made ithis labourto hew outhere, forheundertook 'to collect here into an art or science, that which had been pretermitted by others as matters of common sense and experience.'
It does not consist with the design of the present work to track that draught of a new science of morality and policy, that 'table' of an inductive science of human nature, and human life, which the plan of the Advancement of Learning contains, with all the lettering of its compartments put down, into these systematic scientific collections, which the Fables of the Modern Learning,—which these magnificent Parabolical Poems have been able hitherto to wrap up and conceal.
This work is merely introductory, and the design of it is to remove that primary obstacle to the diligent study of these works, which the present theory of them contains; since that concealment of their true intention and history, which was inevitable at the time, no longer serves the author's purpose, and now that the times are ripe for the learning which they contain, only serves indeed to hinder it. And the illustrations which are here produced, are produced with reference to that object, and are limited strictly to the unfolding of those 'secrets of policy,' which are the necessary introduction to that which follows.
Did it never occur to the student of theNovum Organumthat the constant application of that 'New Machine' by the inventor of it himself, to one particular class of subjects, so constant as to produce on the mind of the careless reader the common impression, that it was intended to be applied to that class only, and that the relief of the human estate, in that one department of the human want, constituted its whole design: did it never occur to the curious inquirer, or to the active experimenter in this new rule of learning, that this apparently so rigorous limitation of its applications in the hands of its author is—under all the circumstances—a thing worthy of being inquired into? Considering who the author of it is, and that it is on the face of it, a new method of dealing with facts in general, a new method of obtaining axioms of practice from history in general, and not a specific method of obtaining them from that particular department of history from which his instances are taken; and, considering, too, that the author was himself aware of the whole sweep of its applications, and that he has taken pains to include in his description of its powers, the assertion,—the distinct, deliberate assertion—that it is capable of being applied asefficiently, to those nobler departments of the human need, which are marked out for it in the Great Instauration—those very departments in which he was known himself to be so deeply interested, and in which he had been all his life such a diligent explorer and experimenter. Did it never occur to the scholar, to inquire why he did not apply it, then, himself to those very subjects, instead of keeping so stedfastly to the physical forces in his illustration of its powers? And has any one ever read the plan of this man's works? Has any one seen the scheme of that great enterprise, for which he was the responsible person in his own time—that scheme which he wrote out, and put in among these published acknowledged works of his, which he dared to produce in his own name, to show what parts of his 'labor,'—what part of chief consequence wasnotthus produced? Has any one seen that plan of a new system of Universal Science, which was published in the reign of James the First, under the patronage of that monarch? And if it has been seen, what is the reason there has been no enquiry made for those works, in which the author openly proposes to apply his new organum in person to these very subjects; and that, too, when he takes pains to tell us, in reference to that undertaking, that he isnota vain promiser.
There is a pretence of supplying that new kind of history, which the new method of discovery and invention requires as the first step towards its conclusions, which is put down as the THIRD PART of the Instauration, though the natural history which is produced for that purpose is very far from fulfilling the description and promise of that division. But where is the FOURTH part of the Great Instauration? Has anybody seen the FOURTH part? Where is that so important part for which all that precedes it is a preparation, or to which it is subsidiary? Where is that part which consists of EXAMPLES, that are nothing but aparticularapplication of the SECOND; that is, the Novum Organum,—'and tosubjects of the noblest kind?' Where is 'that part of our work which enters upon PHILOSOPHY ITSELF,' instead of dealing any longer, or professing to deal, with THE METHOD merely of finding that which man's relief requires, or instead of exhibiting that method any longerin the abstract? Where are the works in which he undertakes to show it in operation, with its new 'grappling hooks' on the matter of the human life—applied by the inventor himself to 'the noblest subjects?' Surely that would be a sight to see. What is the reason that our editors do not produce these so important works in their editions? What is the reason that our critics do not include them in their criticism? What is the reason that our scholars do not quote them? Instead of stopping with that mere report of the condition of learning and its deficiences, and that outline of what is to be done, which makes the FIRST PART or Introduction to this work; or stopping with the description of the new method, or the Novum Organum, which makes the SECOND; why don't they go on to the 'new philosophy itself,' and show us that as well,—the very object of all this preparation? When he describes in the SECOND part hismethodof finding true terms, or rather the method of his school, when he describes this new method of finding 'ideas,' ideas as they are in nature, powers, causes, the elements of history, orforms, as he more commonly calls them, when he describes this new method of deducing axioms, axioms that are ready for practice, he does, indeed, give usinstances; but it so happens, that the instances are all ofone kindthere. They are the physical powers that supply his examples in that part.
In describing this method merely, he produces what he calls his Tables of Invention, or Tables of REVIEW OF INSTANCES; but where is that part in which he tells us we shall find these same tables again, with 'the nobler subjects' on them? He produces them for careful scrutiny in his second part; and he makes no small parade in bringing them in. He shews them up very industriously, and is very particular to direct the admiring attention of the reader to their adaptation as means to an end. But certainly there is nothing in that specimen of what can be done with them which he contents himself with there, that would lead any one to infer that the power of this invention, which is the novelty of it, was going to be a dangerous thing to society, or, indeed, that they were not the most harmless things in the world. It is the true cause of HEAT, and the infallible means of producing that under the greatest variety of conditions, which he appears to be trying to arrive at there. But what harm can there be in that, or in any other discovery of that kind. And there is no real impression made on any one's mind by that book, that there is any other kind of invention or discovery intended in the practical applications of this method? The very free, but of course not pedantic, use of the new terminology of a new school in philosophy, in which this author indulges—a terminology of a somewhat figurative and poetic kind, one cannot but observe, for a philosopher of so strictly a logical turn of mind, one whose thoughts were running on abstractions so entirely, to construct; his continued preference for these new scholastic terms, and his inflexible adherence to a most profoundly erudite mode of expression whenever he approaches 'the part operative' of his work, is indeed calculated to awe and keep at a distance minds not yet prepared to grapple formally with those 'nobler subjects' to which allusion is made in another place. King James was a man of some erudition himself; but he declared frankly that for his part he could not understand this book; and it was not strange that he could not, for the author did not intend that he should. The philosopher drops a hint in passing, however, that all which is essential in this method, might perhaps be retained without quite so much formality and fuss in the use of it, and that the proposed result might be arrived at by means of these same tables, without any use of technical language at all, under other circumstances.
The results which have since been obtained by the use of this method in that department of philosophy to which it is specially applied in the Novum Organum, give to the inquirer into the causes of the physical phenomena now, some advantages which no invention could supply them. That was what the founders of this philosophy expected and predicted. They left this department to their school. The author of the Novum Organum orders and initiates this inquiry; but the basis of the induction in this department is as yet wanting; and the collections and experiments here require combinations of skill and labour which they cannot at once command. They will do what they can here too, in their small way, just to make a beginning; but they do not lay much stress upon any thing they can accomplish with the use of their own method in this field. It serves, however, a very convenient purpose with them; neither do they at all underrate its intrinsic importance.
But the man who has studiously created for himself a social position which enables him to assume openly, and even ostentatiously, the position of an innovator—an innovatorin the world of letters, an advancer of—learning—is compelled to introduce his innovation with the complaint that he finds the mind of the world so stupified, so bewildered with evil, and so under the influence of dogmas, that the first thing to be done is to get so much as a thought admitted of the possibility of a better state of things. 'The present system of philosophy,' he says, 'cherishes in its bosom certain positions or dogmas which it will be found, are calculated to produce a full conviction that no difficult, commanding, and powerful operation on natureoughtto be anticipated, through the means of art.' And, therefore, after criticising the theory and practice of the world as he finds it, reporting as well as he can,—though he can find no words, he says, in which to do justice to his feeling in regard to it—the deficienciesin its learning, he devotes a considerable portion of the description of his new method to the grounds of 'hope' which he derives from this philosophic survey, and that that hope is not a hope of a better state of things in respect to the physical wants of man merely, that it is not a hope of a renovation in the arts which minister to those wants exclusively, any very careful reader of the first book of the Novum Organum will be apt on the whole to infer. But the statements here are very general, and he refers us to another placefor particulars.
'Let us then speak ofhope' he says, 'especiallyas we are not vain promisers, nor are willing to enforce or ensnare men's judgments; but would rather lead themwillinglyforward. And although we shall employ the most cogent means ofenforcing hope when we bring themTO PARTICULARS, andespeciallythose which are digested and arranged in our Tables of Invention, the subject partly of the SECOND, but—principally—mark it,principallyof the FOURTH part of the Instauration, which are, indeed, rather the very objects of our hopes than hope itself.' Does he dare to tell us, in this very connection, that he isnota vain promiser, when no such PART as that to which he refers us here is to be found anywhere among his writings—when thisprincipalpart of his promise remains unfulfilled. 'The FOURTH part of the Instauration,' he says again in his formal description of it, 'enters upon philosophy itself, furnishingexamples of inquiry and investigation, according to our own method,in certain subjects of the noblest kind, but greatly differing from each other, that a specimen may be had ofevery sort. By these examples, we meannot illustrations of rules and precepts,' [He will show the facts in such order, in such scientific, select, methodical arrangements, that rules and precepts will be forced from them; for he will show them, on the tables of invention, and rules and precepts are the vintage that flows from the illustrious instances—the prerogative instances—the ripe, large, cleared, selected clusters of facts, the subtle prepared history which the tables of invention collect. The definition of the simple original elements of history, the pure definition is the first vintage from these; but 'that which in speculative philosophy corresponds to the cause, in practical philosophy becomes the rule' andthe axiom of practice, ready for use, is the final result.] 'but perfect models, which will exemplify the SECOND PART of this work, and represent, as it were, tothe eyethe whole progress of the mind, andthe continued structure and order of inventionin THE MORE CHOSEN SUBJECTS'—note it, in themorechosen subjects; but this is not at all—'after the same manner as globes and machines facilitate the more abstruse and subtle demonstrations in mathematics.' But in another place he tells us, that the poetic form of demonstration is the form to which it is necessary to have recourse on these subjects,especiallywhen we come to these more abstruse and subtle demonstrations, as it opens an easy and familiar passage to the human understanding in all new discoveries, that are abstruse and out of the road of vulgar opinion; and that at the time he was writing out this plan of his works, any one, who would let in new light on the human understanding, and conquer prejudices, without raising animosity, opposition, or disturbance, had no choice—must go in that same path, or none. Where are those diagrams? And what does he mean, when he tells us in this connection that he is not a vain promiser? Where are those particular cases, in which this method of investigation is applied to the noblest subjects? Where are the diagrams, in which the order of the investigation is represented, as it were, to the eye, which serve the same purpose, 'that globes and machines serve in the more abstruse and subtle demonstrations in mathematics?' We are all acquainted with one poem, at least, published about that time, in which some very abstruse and subtle investigations appear to be in progress,notwithout the use of diagrams, and very lively ones too; but one in which the intention of the poet appears to be to the last degree 'enigmatical,' inasmuch as it has engaged the attention of the most philosophical minds ever since, and inasmuch as the most able critics have never been able to comprehend that intention fully in their criticism. And it is bound up with many others, in which the subjects are not less carefully chosen, and in which the method of inquiry is the same; in which that same method that is exhibited in the 'Novum Organum' in the abstract, or in its application to the investigation of the physical phenomena, is everywhere illustrated in the most chosen subjects—in subjects of the noblest kind. This volume, and another which has been mentioned here, contain the THIRD and FOURTH PARTS of the Great Instauration, whether this man who describes them here, and who forgot, it would seem, to fulfil his promise in reference to them, be aware of it or not.
That is the part of the Great Instauration that we want now, and we are fairly entitled to it, because these are not 'the next ages,' or 'the times which were nearer,' and which this author seldom speaks of without betraying his clear foresight of the political and social convulsions that were then at hand. These are the times, which were farther off, to which he appeals from those nearer ages, and to which he expressly dedicates the opening of his designs.
Now, what is it that we have to find? What is it that is missing out of this philosophy? Nothing less than the 'principal' part of it. All that is good for anything in it, according to the author's own estimate. The rest serves merely 'to pass the time,' or it is good as it serves to prepare the way for this. What is it that we have to look for? The 'Novum Organum,' that severe, rigorous method of scientific inquiry, applied tothe more chosen subjectsin the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and James I. Tables of Review of Instances, and all that Logic which is brought out in the doctrine of the PREROGATIVE INSTANCES, whereby the mind of man is prepared for its encounter with fact in general, brought down to particulars, and applied to the noblest subjects, and to every sort of subject which the philosophic mind of that agechoseto apply it to. That is what we want to find.
'The prerogative instances' in 'themorechosen subjects.' The whole field which that philosophy chose for its field, and called the noblest, the principal, the chosen, the more chosen one. Every part of it reduced to scientific inquiry, put under the rule of the 'Novum Organum'; that is what we want to find. We know that no such thing could possibly be found in the acknowledged writings of this author. Nothing answering to that description, composed by a statesman and a philosopher, with an avowed intention in his writing—an intention to effect changes, too, in the actual condition of men, and 'to suborn practice and actual life,' no such work by such an author could by any means have been got through the press then. No one who studies the subject will think of looking for that FOURTH PART of the Instauration among the author's acknowledged writings. Does he give us any hint as to where we are to look for it? Is there any intimation as to the particular form of writing in which we are to find it? for find it we must and shall, because he isnota vain promiser. Thesubjectitself determines the form, he says; and the fact that the whole ground of the discovery is ground already necessarily comprehended in the preconceptions of the many—that it is ground covered all over with the traditions and rude theories of unlearned ages, this fact, also, imperiously determines the method of the inculcation. Who that knows what the so-called Baconian method of learning really is, will need to be told that the principal books of it will be—books of INSTANCES and PARTICULARS, SPECIMENS—living ones, and that these will occupy the prominent place in the book; and that the conclusions and precepts will come in as abstractions from these, drawn freshly and on the spot from particulars, and, therefore, ready for use, 'knowing the way to particulars again?' Who would ever expect to find the principal books of this learning—the books in which it enters upon philosophy itself, and undertakes to leave a specimen of its own method in the noblest subjects in its own chosen field—who would ever expect to find these books, books of abstractions, books of precepts, with instances or examples brought in, to illustrate or make them good? For this is not a point of method merely, but a point of substance, as he takes pains to tell us. And who that has ever once read his own account of the method in which he proposes towinthe human mind from its preconceptions, instead of undertaking to overcome it with Logic and sharp disputations,—who that knows what place he gives to Rhetoric, what place he gives to the Imagination in his scheme of innovation, will expect to find these books, books of a dry didactic learning? Does the student know how many times, in how many forms, under how many different heads, he perseveringly inserts the bold assurance, that the form of poesy and enigmatic allusive writing is theonlyform in which the higher applications of his discovery can be made to any purpose in that age? Who would expect to find this part in any professedly scientific work, when he tells us expressly, 'Reason cannot be so sensible, nor examples so fit,' as the examples which his scientific terminology includes in the department ofPoesy?
All the old historical wisdom was in that form, he says; all the first philosophy was poetical; all the old divinity came in history and parable; and even to this day, he who would let in new light upon the human understanding, without raising opposition or disturbance, must still go in the same path, and have recourse to the like method.
He was an innovator; he wasnotan agitator. And he claims that mark of a divine presence in his work, that its benefactions come, without noise or perturbation,in aura leni. Of innovations, there has been none in history like that which he propounded, but neither would he strive nor cry. There was no voice in the streets, there was no red ensign lifted, there was no clarion-swell, or roll of the conqueror's drum to signal to the world that entrance. He, too, claims a divine authority for his innovation, and he declares it to be of God. It is the providential order of the world's history which is revealed in it; it is the fulfilment of ancient prophecy which this new chief, laden with new gifts for men, openly announces.
'Let us begin from God,' he says, when he begins to open his ground ofhope, after he has exposed the wretched condition of men as he finds them, without any scientific knowledge of the laws and institutes of the universe they inhabit, engaged in a perpetual and mad collision with them; 'Let us begin from God, and show that our pursuit, from its exceeding goodness,clearlyproceeds from Him, the Author of GOOD and Father of LIGHT. Now,in all divine works, the smallest beginnings lead assuredly to some results; and the rule in spiritual matters, that the Kingdom of God cometh without observation, is also found to be truein every great work ofPROVIDENCE, so that everything glides in quietly, without confusion or noise; and the matter is achieved before men even think of perceiving that it is commenced.' 'Men,' he tells us, 'men should imitate Nature, who innovatethgreatlybutquietly, and by degrees scarce to be perceived,' who will not dispense with the old form till the new one is finished and in its place.
What is that we want to find? We want to find the new method of scientific inquiry applied to the questions in which men are most deeply interested—questions which were then imperiously and instantly urged on the thoughtful mind. We want to see it applied to POLITICS in the reign of James the First. We want to see it applied to the open questions of another department of inquiry,—certainly not any less important,—in that reign, and in the reign which preceded it. We want to see the facts sifted through those scientific tables of review, from which the true form of SOVEREIGNTY, thelegitimatesovereignty, is to be inducted, and the scientific axioms of government with it. We want to see the science of observation and experiment, the science of nature in general, applied to the cure of the common-weal in the reign of James the First, and to that particular crisis in its disease, in which it appeared to the observers to be at its last gasp; and that, too, by the principal doctors in that profession,—men of the very largest experience in it, who felt obliged to pursue their work conscientiously, whether the patientobjectedor not. But are there any such books as these? Certainly. You have the author's own word for it. 'Some may raise this question,' he says, 'thisquestionrather thanobjection'—[it is better that it should come in the form of aquestion, than in the form ofan objection, as it would have come, if there had been no room to 'raise the question']—'whether we talkof perfectingnatural philosophy' [using the term here in its usual limited sense], 'whether we talk of perfecting natural philosophyalone, according to our method, or,the othersciences—such as, ETHICS, LOGIC, POLITICS.'Thatis the question 'raised.' 'We certainly intend to comprehend them ALL.'Thatisthe author'sanswer to it. 'And ascommon logicwhichregulates matters by syllogism, is applied, not only to natural, but to every other science,soour inductive methodlikewisecomprehends them ALL.' With such iteration will he think fit to give us this point. It is put in here for those 'who raise the question'—the question 'rather than objection.' The other sort are taken care of in other places. 'For,' he continues, 'we form a history and tables of invention, foranger, fear, shame,andthe like; andalso for examples in civil life' [that was to be the principal part of the science when he laid out the plan of it in the advancement of learning] 'and thementaloperations ofmemory, composition, division, judgment, and the rest;as wellas forheatandcold, lightandvegetation, andthe like.' That is the plan of the new science, as the author sketches it for the benefit of those who raise questions rather than objections. That is its comprehension precisely, whenever he undertakes to mark out its limits for the satisfaction of this class of readers. But this is that same FOURTH PART to which he refers us in the other places for the application of his method to those nobler subjects, those more chosen subjects; and that is just the part of his science which appears to be wanting. How happens it? Did he get so occupied with the question ofheatandcold,lightand vegetation, andthe like, that after all he forgot this part with its nobler applications? How could that be, when he tells us expressly, that they are the more chosen subjects of his inquiry. This part which he speaks of here, is the missing part of his philosophy, unquestionably. These are the books of it which have been missing hitherto; but in that Providential order of events to which he refers himself, the time has come for them to be inquired for; and this inquiry is itself a part of that movement, in which the smallest beginnings lead assuredly to some result. For, 'let us begin from God,' he says, 'and show that our pursuit, from its exceeding goodness, clearly proceeds from Him, the Author of GOOD, and not of misery; the Father of LIGHT, and not of darkness.'
Of course, it was impossible to get out any scientific doctrine of the human society, without coming at once in collision with that doctrine of the divinity of arbitrary power which the monarchs of England were then openly sustaining. Who needs to be told, that he who would handle that argument scientifically, then, without military weapons, as this inquirerwould, must indeed 'pray in aid ofsimiles.' And yet a very searching and critical inquiry into the claims of that institution, which the new philosophy found in possession of the human welfare, and asserting a divine right to it as a thing of private property and legitimate family inheritance,—such a criticism was, in fact, inevitably involved in that inquiry into the principles of ahumansubjection which appeared to this philosopher to belong properly to the more chosen subjects of a scientific investigation.
And notwithstanding the delicacy of the subjects, and the extremely critical nature of the investigation, when it came to touch those particulars, with which the personal observations and experiments of the founders of this new school in philosophy had tended to enrich their collections in this department,—'and the aim is better,' says the principal spokesman of this school, who quietly proposes to introduce this method intopolitics, 'the aim is betterwhen the mark is alive;' notwithstanding the difficulties which appeared to lie then in the way of such an investigation, the means of conducting it to the entire satisfaction, and, indeed, to the large entertainment of the persons chiefly concerned, were not wanting. For this was one of those 'secrets of policy,' which have always required the aid of fable, and the idea ofdramatisingthe fable for the sake of reaching in some sort those who are incapable of receiving any thing 'which does not directly fall under, and strike the senses,' as the philosopher has it; those who are capable of nothing but 'dumb shows and noise,' as Hamlet has it; this idea, though certainly a very happy, was not with these men an original one. Men, whose relations to the state were not so different as the difference in the forms of government would perhaps lead us to suppose,—men of the gravest learning and enriched with the choicest accomplishments of their time, had adopted that same method of influencing public opinion, some two thousand years earlier, and even as long before as that, there were 'secrets of morality and policy,' to which this form of writing appeared to offer the most fitting veil.
Whether 'the new' philosopher,—whether 'the new magician' of this time, was, in fact, in possession of any art which enabled him to handle without diffidence or scruple the great political question which was then already the question of the time; whether 'THE CROWN'—that double crown of military conquest and priestly usurpation, which was the one estate of the realm at that crisis in English history, did, among other things in some way, come under the edges of that new analysis which was severingallhere then, and get divided clearly with 'the mind, that divine fire,'—whether any such thing as that occurred here then, the reader of the following pages will be able to judge. The careful reader of the extracts they contain, taken from a work of practical philosophy which made its appearance about those days, will certainly have no difficulty at all in deciding that question. For, first of all, it is necessary to find that political key to the Elizabethan art of delivery, which unlocks the great works of the Elizabethan philosophy, and that is the necessity which determines the selection of the Plays that are produced in this volume. They are brought in to illustrate the fact already stated, and already demonstrated, the fact which is the subject of this volume, the fact that the new practical philosophy of the modern ages, which has its beginning here, was not limited, in the plan of its founders, to 'natural philosophy' and 'the part operative' of that,—the fact that it comprehended, as its principal department, the department in which its 'noblest subjects' lay, and in which its most vital innovations were included, a field of enquiry which could not then be entered without the aid of fable and parable, and one which required not then only, 'but now, and at all times,' the aid of a vivid poetic illustration; they are brought in to illustrate the fact already demonstrated from other sources, the fact that the new philosophy was the work of men able to fulfil their work under such conditions, able to work, if not for the times that were nearer, for the times that were further off; men who thought it little so they could fulfil and perfect their work and make their account of it to the Work-master, to robe another with their glory; men who could relinquish the noblest works of the human genius, that they might save them from the mortal stabs of an age of darkness, that they might make them over unharmed in their boundless freedom, in their unstained perfection, to the farthest ages of the advancement of learning,—that they might 'teach them how to live and look fresh' still,
'When tyrants' crests, and tombs of brass are spent.'
That is the one fact, the indestructible fact, which this book is to demonstrate.
'Thou'dst shun a bear;But if thy way lay towards the raging sea,Thou'dst meet the bear i' the mouth.'
'I think the king is but a man, as I am.'—King Henry.'They told me I was everything.'—Lear.
OF course, it was not possible that the prerogative should be openly dealt with at such a time, questioned, discussed, scientifically examined, in the very presence of royalty itself, except by persons endowed with extraordinary privileges and immunities, persons, indeed, of quite irresponsible authority, whose right to do and say what they pleased, Elizabeth herself, though they should enter upon a critical analysis of the divine rights of kings to her face, and deliberately lay bare the defects in that title which she was then attempting to maintain, must needs notwithstanding, concede and respect.
And such persons, as it happened, were not wanting in the retinue of that sovereignty which was working in disguise here then, and laying the foundations of that throne in the thoughts of men, which would replace old principalities and powers, and not political dominions merely. To the creative genius which waited on the philosophic mind of that age, making up in the splendour of its gifts for the poverty of its exterior conditions, such persons,—persons of any amount or variety of capacity which the necessary question of its play might require, were not wanting:—'came with a thought.'
Of course, poor Bolingbroke, fevered with the weight of his ill-got crown, and passing a sleepless night in spite of its supposed exemptions, unable to command on his state-bed, with all his royal means and appliances, the luxury that the wet sea boy in the storm enjoys,—and the poet appears, to have had some experience of this mortal ill, which inclines him to put it down among those which ought to be excluded from a state of supreme earthly felicity,—the poor guilty disgusted usurper, discovering that this so blessed 'invention' was not included in the prerogative he had seized, under the exasperation of the circumstances, might surely be allowed to mutter to himself, in the solitude of his own bed-chamber, a few general reflections on the subject, and, indeed, disable his own position to any extent, without expecting to be called to an account for it, by any future son or daughter of his usurping lineage. That extraordinary, but when one came to look at it, quite incontestable fact, that nature in her sovereignty, imperial still, refused to recognize this artificial difference in men, but still went on her way in all things, as if 'the golden standard' were not there, classing the monarch with his 'poorest subject;'—the fact that this charmed 'round of sovereignty,' did not after all secure the least exemption from the commonindividualhuman frailty, and helplessness,—this would, of course, strike the usurper who had purchased the crown at such an expense, as a fact in natural history worth communicating, if it were only for the benefit of future princes, who might be disposed to embark in a similar undertaking. Here, of course, the moral was proper, and obvious enough; or close at hand, and ready to be produced, in case any serious inquiry should be made for it; though the poet might seem, perhaps, to a severely critical mind, disposed to pursue his philosophical inquiry a little too curiously into the awful secrets of majesty, retired within itself, and pondering its own position;—openly searching what Lord Bacon reverently tells us, the Scriptures pronounce to be inscrutable, namely,the heartsofkings, and audaciously laying bare those private passages, those confessions, and misgivings, and frailties, for which policy and reverence prescribe concealment, and which are supposed in the play, indeed, to be shrouded from the profane and vulgar eye, a circumstance which, of course, was expected to modify the impression.
So, too, that profoundly philosophical suspicion, that a rose, or a violet, did actually smell, to a person occupying this sublime position, very much as it did to another; a suspicion which, in the mouth of a common man, would have been literally sufficient to 'make a star-chamber matter of'; and all that thorough-going analysis of the trick and pageant of majesty which follows it, would, of course, come only as a graceful concession, from the mouth of that genuine piece of royalty, who contrives to hide so much of the poet's own 'sovereignty of nature,' under the mantle of his free and princely humours, the brave and gentle hero of Agincourt.
'ThoughIspeak it to you,' he says, talking in the disguise of a 'private,' 'I think the King is but a man as I am, the violet smells to him as it doth to me; all his senses,have but human conditions. His ceremonies laid by, in his nakedness, he appears but a man; and though his affections are higher mounted than ours, yet, when they stoop, they stoop with the like wing. When he sees reason of fears, as we do, his fears, out of doubt, be of the same relish as ours are'; and in the same scene, thus the royal philosopher versifies, and soliloquises on the same delicate question.
'And what havekingsthat "privates" have not, too, save ceremony,—save general ceremony? And what art thou, thouidol ceremony?—What isthysoulofadoration?'
A grave question, for a man of an inquiring habit of mind, in those times: let us see how a Poet can answer it.
'Art thou aught else butplace, degreeandform,Creating awe and fear inother men?Wherein, thouart less happy, being feared,Than they in fearing?
[Again and again this man has told us, and on his oath, that he cherished no evil intentions, no thought of harm to the king; and those who know what criticisms on the state, as it was then, he had authorised, and what changes in it he was certainly meditating and preparing the way for, have charged him with falsehood and perjury on that account; but this is what he means. He thinks that wretched victim of that most irrational and monstrous state of things, on whose head the crown of an arbitrary rule is placed, with all its responsibilities, in his infinite unfitness for them, is, in fact, the one whose case most of all requires relief. He is the one, in this theory, who suffers from this unnatural state of things, not less, but more, than his meanest subject. 'Thou art less happy being feared, than they in fearing.']
What drink'st thou oftinstead of homage sweetButpoison'd flattery? O! be sick, great greatness,And bid thyceremonygive theecure.Thinkest thou thefiery fever will go outWithtitles blown from adulation?Will it give place to flexure and low bending?
Interesting physiological questions! And though the author, for reasons of his own, has seen fit to put them in blank verse here, it is not because he does not understand, as we shall see elsewhere, that they are questions of a truly scientific character, which require to be put in prose in his time—questions of vital consequence to all men. The effect of 'poisoned flattery,' and 'titles blown from adulation' on the minds, of those to whose single will and caprice the whole welfare of the state, and all the gravest questions for this life and the next, were then entrusted, naturally appeared to the philosophical mind, perseveringly addicted to inquiries, in which the practical interests of men were involved, a question of gravest moment.
But here it is the physical difference which accompanies this so immense human distinction, which he appears to be in quest of; it is the control over nature with which these 'farcical titles' invest their possessor, that he appears to be now pertinaciously bent upon ascertaining. For we shall find, as we pursue the subject, that this is not an accidental point here, a casual incident of the character, or of the plot, a thing which belongs to the play, and not to the author; but that this is a poet who is somehow perpetually haunted with the impression that those who assume a divine right to control, and dispose of their fellow-men, ought to exhibit some sign of their authority; some superior abilities; some magical control; some light and power that other men have not. How he came by any such notions, the critic of his works is, of course, not bound to show; but that which meets him at the first reading is the fact, the incontestable fact, that the Poet of Shakspere's stage, be he who he may, is a poet whose mind is in some way deeply occupied with this question; that it is a poet who is infected, and, indeed, perfectly possessed, with the idea, that the true human leadership ought to consist in the ability to extend the empire of man over nature,—in the ability to unite and control men, and lead them in battalions against those common evils which infest the human conditions,—not fevers only but 'worser' evils, and harder to be cured, and to the conquest of those supernal blessings which the human race have always been vainly crying for. 'I am a king that find thee,' he says.
And having this inveterate notion of a true human regality to begin with, he is naturally the more curious and prying in regard to the claims of the one which he finds in possession; and when by the mystery of his profession and art, he contrives to get the cloak of that factitious royalty about him, he asks questions under its cover which another man would not think of putting.
'Canst thou,' he continues, walking up and down the stage in King Hal's mantle, inquiring narrowly into its virtues and taking advantage of that occasion to ascertain the limits of the prerogative—that very dubious question then,—
'Canst thou when thou command'st the beggar's knee,Command the healthof it?'—
No? what mockery of power is it then? But, this in connection with the preceding inquiry in regard to the effect of titles on the progress of a fever, or the amenability of its paroxysm, to flexure and low bending, might have seemed perhaps in the mouth of a subject to savour somewhat of irony; it might have sounded too much like a taunt upon the royal helplessness under cover of a serious philosophical inquiry, or it might have betrayed in such an one a disposition to pursue scientific inquiries farther than was perhaps expedient. But thus it is, that THE KING can dare to pursue the subject, answering his own questions.
'No, thou proud dream Thatplayst so subtly with a king's repose;Iam a kingthat find thee; and I know 'Tis not the THE BALM, THE SCEPTRE, and THE BALL, THE SWORD, THE MACE, THE CROWN IMPERIAL,The inter-tissuedROBE ofgold and pearl, The FARCED TITLE—
What is that?—Mark it:—thefarcedTITLE!—A bold word, one would say, even witha kingto authorise it.
'The farced TITLE running 'fore the king,THE THRONE he sits on, northe tideof POMPThat beats upon the high shore of this world,No, not all these, thrice gorgeous CEREMONY,Not all these laid in BED MAJESTICAL,Cansleep so soundlyas the wretched slaveWho, with a body filled, and vacant mind,Gets him to rest crammed with distressful bread,Never sees horrid night, the child of hell,But like a lackey from the rise to setSweats in the eye of Phoebus; and all nightSleeps in Elysium.
Yes, there we have him, at last. There he is exactly. That is the scientific picture of him, 'poor man,' as this poet calls him elsewhere. What malice could a philosophic poet bear him? That is the monarchy that men were 'sanctifying themselves with,' and 'turning up the white of the eye to,' then. That is the figure that it makes when it comes to be laid in its state-bed, upon the scientific table of review, not in the formal manner of 'the second part' of this philosophy, but in that other manner which the author of theNovum Organum, speaks of so frequently, as the one to be used in applying it to subjects of this nature. That is the anatomy of him, which 'ourmethod of inquiry and investigation,' brings out without much trouble 'when we come to particulars.' 'Truly we were in good hands,' as the other one says, who finds it more convenient, for his part, to discourse on these points, from a distance.
That is the figure the usurping monarch's pretensions make at the first blush, in the collections from which 'the vintage' of the true sovereignty, and the scientific principles of governments are to be expressed, when the truemonarchy, the legitimate, 'one only man power,' is the thing inquired for. This one goes to 'the negative' side apparently. A wretched fellow that cannot so much as 'sleep o' nights,' that lies there on the stage in the play of Henry the Fourth, in the sight of all the people, with THE CROWN on his very pillow, by way 'facilitating the demonstration,' pining for the 'Elysium' at his meanest subject,—that the poor slave, 'crammed with distressful bread,' commands; crying for the luxury that the wet seaboy, on his high and giddy couch enjoys;—and from whose note-book came that image, dashed with the ocean spray,—who saw that seaboy sleeping inthatstorm?
But, as for this KING, it is the king which the scientific history brings out; whereas, in the other sort of history that was in use then, lie is hardly distinguishable at all from those Mexican kings who undertook to keep the heavenly bodies in their places, and, at the same time, to cause all things to be borne by the earth which were requisite for the comfort and convenience of man; a peculiarity of those sovereigns, of which the Man on the Mountains, whose study is so well situated for observations of that sort, makes such a pleasant note.
But whatever other view we may take of it, this, it must be conceded, is a tolerably comprehensive exhibition, in the general, of the mere pageant of royalty, and a pretty free mode of handling it; but it is at the same time a privileged and entirely safe one. For the liberty of this great Prince to repeat to himself, in the course of a solitary stroll through his own camp at midnight, when nobody is supposed to be within hearing, certain philosophical conclusions which he was understood to have arrived at in the course of his own regal experience, could hardly be called in question. And as to that most extraordinary conversation in which, by means of his disguise on this occasion, he becomes a participator, if the Prince himself were too generous to avail himself of it to the harm of the speakers, it would ill become any one else to take exceptions at it.
And yet it is a conversation in which a party of common soldiers are permitted to 'speak their minds freely' for once, though 'the blank verse has to halt for it,' on questions which would be considered at present questions of 'gravity.' It is a dialogue in which these men are allowed to discuss one of the most important institutions of their time from an ethical point of view, in a tone as free as the president of a Peace Society could use to-day in discussing the same topic, intermingling their remarks with criticisms on the government, and personal allusions to the king himself, which would seem to be more in accordance with the manners of the nineteenth century, than with those of the Poet's time.
But then these wicked and treasonous grumblings being fortunately encountered on the spot, and corrected by the king himself in his own august person, would only serve for edification in the end; if, indeed, that appeal to the national pride which would conclude the matter, and the glory of that great day which was even then breaking in the East, should leave room for any reflections upon it. For it was none other than the field ofAgincourtthat was subjected to this philosophic inquiry. It was the lustre of that immortal victory which was to England then, what Waterloo and the victories of Nelson are now, that was thus chemically treated beforehand. Under the cover of that renowned triumph, it was, that these soldiers could venture to search so deeply the question of war in general; it was in the person of its imperial hero, that the statesman could venture to touch so boldly, an institution which gave to one man, by his own confession no better or wiser than his neighbours, the power to involve nations in such horrors.
But let us join the king in his stroll, and hear for ourselves, what it is that these soldiers are discussing, by the camp-fires ofAgincourt;—what it is that this first voice from the ranks has to say for itself. The king has just encountered by the way a poetical sentinel, who, not satisfied with the watchword—'a friend,'— requests the disguised prince 'to discuss to him, and answer, whether he is anofficer, orbase, common, andpopular,' when the king lights on this little group, and the discussion which Pistol had solicited, apparently on his own behalf, actually takes place, for the benefit of the Poet's audience, and the answer to these inquiries comes out in due order.
Court. Brother John Bates, is not that the morning which breaks yonder?
Bates. I think it be,but we have no great cause to desire theapproach of day.
Will. We see yonder the beginning of the day, but I think we shall never see the end of it. Who goes there?
King Henry. A friend.
Will. Under what captain serve you?
King. Under Sir Thomas Erpingham.
Will. A good old commander, and a most kind gentleman: I pray you, what thinks he of our estate?
King.Even as men wrecked upon a sand, that look to be washed off the next tide.
Bates.He hath not told his thought to the king?
King. No; nor it is not meet that he should; for thoughI speak it to you, I think the king is but a man as I am.
And it is here that he proceeds to make that important disclosure above quoted, that all his senses have but human conditions, and that all hisaffections, thoughhigher mounted, stoop with the like wing; and therefore no man should in reason possess him with any appearance of fear, lest he, by showing it, 'should dishearten his army.'
Bates. He may show what outward courage he will; but,Ibelieve, as cold a night as 'tis, he could wish himself in the Thames, up to the neck; and so I would he were, and I by him, at all adventures, so we were quit here.
King. By my troth, I will speak my conscience of the king. I think he would not wish himself anywhere but where he is.
Bates. Then would he were here alone; so should he be sure to be ransomed, and a many poor men's lives saved.
King. I dare say you love him not so ill as to wish him here alone;howsoever you speak this to feel other men's minds; Methinks I could not die anywhere so contented as in the king's company;his cause being just, and his quarrel honorable.
Will. That's more than we know.
Bates. Ay, or more than we should seek after; for we know enough, if we know we are the king's subjects; if his cause be wrong, our obedience to thekingwipes the crime of it out of us.
Will. Butif the cause be not good, theking himself hath a heavy reckoning to make; when all those legs and arms and heads chopped off in a battle shall join together at the latter day, and cry all—We died at such a place; some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them; some upon the debts they owe; some upon their children rawly left. I am afeared that few die well, that die in battle; for how can theycharitablydispose of anythingwhen blood is their argument? Now if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it; whom to disobey wereagainst all proportion of subjection.
King. So, if a son that is by his father sent about merchandise, do sinfully miscarry upon the sea, the imputation of his wickedness, by your rule, should be imposed upon his father that sent him: or if a servant, under his master's command, transporting a sum of money, be assailed by robbers, and die in many irreconciled iniquities, you may call the business of the master the author of the servant's damnation.—But this is not so…. There is no king, be his cause never so spotless, if it come to the arbitrament of swords, can try it out with all unspotted soldiers.
But the king pursues this question of the royal responsibility until he arrives at the conclusion thatevery subject'sDUTY is THE KING'S, BUT EVERY SUBJECT'S SOUL IS HIS OWN, until he shows, indeed, that there is but one ultimate sovereignty; one to which the king and his subjects are alike amenable, which pursues them everywhere, with its demands and reckonings,—from whose violated laws there is no escape.
Will. 'Tis certain, every man that dies ill, the ill is upon his own head—[no unimportant point in the theology or ethics of that time]—THE KING is not to answer for it.
Bates. I do not desire the king should answer for me, and yet I determine to fight lustily for him.
King. I, myself, heard the king say, he would not be ransomed.
Will. Ay, he said so, to make us fight cheerfully; but when our throats are cut, he may be ransomed and we ne'er the wiser.
King. If I live to see it, I will never trust his word after.
Will.Mass, you'll pay him then!That's a perilous shot out of anelder gun, that a poor andprivatedispleasure can do against a monarch.You may as well go about to turn the sun to ice, with fanning in his face with a peacock's feather.
And, indeed, thus and not any less absurd and monstrous, appeared the idea of subjecting the king to any effect from the subject's displeasure, or the idea of calling him to account—this one, helpless, frail, private man, as he has just been conceded by the king himself to be, for any amount of fraud or dishonesty to the nation, for any breach of trust or honour. For his relation to themassand the source of this fearful irresponsible power was not understood then. The soldier states it well. One might, indeed, as well go about to turn the sun to ice,with fanning in his facewith a peacock's feather.
'You'll never trust his word after,' the soldier continues.'Come, 'tis a foolish saying.'
'Your reproof is somethingtoo round,' is the king's reply. It is indeed round. It is one of those round replies that this poet is so fond of, and the king himself becomes 'the private' of it, when once the centre of this play is found, and the sweep of its circumference is taken. For the sovereignty of law, the kingship of the universal lawin whomsoever it speaks, awful with God's power, armed withhispains and penalties is the scientific sovereignty; and in the scientific diagrams the passions, 'the poor and private passions,' and the arbitrary will, in whomsoever they speak, no matter what symbols of sovereignty they have contrived to usurp, make no better figure in their struggles with that law, than that same which the poet's vivid imagination and intense perception of incompatibilities, has seized on here. The king struggles vainly against the might of the universal nature. It is but the shot out of an 'elder gun;' he might as well 'go about toturn the sun to icewith fanning in his face with apeacock'sfeather.' 'I should be angry with you,' continues the king, after noticing the roundness of that reply, 'I should be angry with you, ifthe timewere convenient.'
But as to the poet who composes these dialogues, of course he does not know whether the time is convenient or not;—he has never reflected upon any of those grave questions which are here so seriously discussed. They are not questions in which he can be supposed to have taken any interest. Of course he does not know or care what it is that these men are talking about. It is only for the sake of an artistic effect, to pass away the night, and to deepen for his hero the gloom which was to serve as the foil and sullen ground of his great victory, that his interlocutors are permitted to go on in this manner.
It is easy to see, however, what extraordinary capabilities this particular form of writing offered to one whohadany purpose, or to an author, who wished on any account, to 'infold' somewhat his meaning;—that was the term used then in reference to this style of writing. For certainly, many things dangerous in themselves could be shuffled in under cover of an artistic effect, which would not strike at the time, amid the agitations, and the skilful checks, and counteractions, of the scene, even the quick ear of despotism itself.
And thus King Lear—that impersonation of absolutism—the very embodiment of pure will and tyranny in their most frantic form, taken out all at once from that hot bath of flatteries to which he had been so long accustomed, that his whole self-consciousness had become saturated, tinctured in the grain with them, and he believed himself to be, within and without, indestructibly, essentially,—'ay, every inch A KING;' with speeches on his supremacy copied, well nigh verbatim, from those which Elizabeth's courtiers habitually addressed to her, still ringing in his ears, hurled out into a single-handed contest with the elements, stripped of all his 'social and artificial lendings,' the poor, bare, unaccommodated, individual man, this living subject of the poet's artistic treatment,—this 'ruined Majesty' anatomized alive, taken to pieces literally before our eyes, pursued, hunted down scientifically, and robbed in detail of all 'the additions of a king'—must, of course, be expected to evince in some way his sense of it; 'for soul and body,' this poet tells us, 'rive not more in parting than greatness going off.'
Once conceive the possibility of presenting the action, the dumb show, of this piece upon the stage at that time, (there have been times since when it could not be done), and the dialogue, with its illimitable freedoms, follows without any difficulty. For the surprise of the monarch at the discoveries which this new state of things forces upon him,—the speeches he makes, with all the levelling of their philosophy, with all the unsurpassable boldness of their political criticism, are too natural and proper to the circumstances, to excite any surprise or question.
Indeed, a king, who, nurtured in the flatteries of the palace, was unlearned enough in the nature of things, to suppose thatthe nameof a king was anything but a shadow whenthe powerwhich had sustained its prerogative was withdrawn,—a king who thought that he could still be a king, and maintain 'his state' and 'his hundred knights,' and their prerogatives, and all his old arbitrary, despotic humours, with their inevitable encroachment on the will and humours, and on the welfare of others, merely on grounds of respect and affection, or on grounds of duty, when not merely the care of 'the state,' but the revenues and power of it had been devolved on others—such a one appeared, indeed, to the poet, to be engaging in an experiment very similar to the one which he found in progress in his time, in that old, decayed, riotous form of military government, which had chosen the moment of its utter dependence on the popular will and respect, as the fitting one for its final suppression of the national liberties. It was an experiment which was, of course, modified in the play by some diverting and strongly pronounced differences, or it would not have been possible to produce it then; but it was still the experiment ofthe unarmed prerogative, that the old popular tale of the ancient king of Britain offered to the poet's hands, and that was an experiment which he was willing to see traced to its natural conclusion on paper at least; while in the subsequent development of the plot, the presence of an insulted trampled outcast majesty on the stage, furnishes a cover of which the poet is continually availing himself, for putting the case of that other outraged sovereignty, whose cause under one form or another, under all disguises, he is always pleading. And in the poet's hands, the debased and outcast king, becomes the impersonation of a debased and violated state, that had given all to its daughters,—the victim of a tyranny not less absolute, the victim, too, of a blindness and fatuity on its own part, not less monstrous, but not, not—thatis the poet's word—notyet irretrievable.
'Thou shalt findI will resume that shape, which thou dost thinkI have cast off for ever; thou shalt, I warrant thee.''Do you mark that, my lord?'
But the question of that prerogative, which has consumed, in the poet's time, all the faculties of government constitutes only a subordinate part of the action of that great play, into which it is here incorporated; a play which comprehends in its new philosophical reaches, in its new and before-unimagined subtilties of analysis, the most radical questions of a practical human science; questions which the practical reason of these modern ages at the moment of its awakening, found itself already compelled to grapple with, and master.
'Consider him well.—Three of us are sophisticated.'
For this is the grand SOCIAL tragedy. It is the tragedy of an unlearned human society; it is the tragedy of a civilization in which grammar, and the relations of sounds and abstract notions to each other have sufficed to absorb the attention of the learned,—a civilization in which the parts of speech, and their relations, have been deeply considered, but one in which the social elements, the parts of life, and their unions, and their prosody, have been left to spontaneity, and empiricism, and all kinds of rude, arbitrary, idiomatical conjunctions, and fortuitous rules; a civilization in which the learning of 'WORDS' is put down by the reporter—invented— and the learning of 'THINGS'—omitted.
And in a movement which was designed to bring the human reason to bear scientifically and artistically upon those questions in which the deepest human interests are involved, the wrong and misery of that social state to which the New Machine, with its new combination of sense and reason, must be applied, had to be fully and elaborately brought out and exhibited. And there was but one language in which the impersonated human misery and wrong,—the speaker for countless hearts, tortured and broken on the rude machinery of unlearned social customs, and lawless social forces, could speak; there was but one tongue in which it could tell its story. For this is the place where science becomes inevitably poetical. That same science which fills our cabinets and herbariums, and chambers of natural history, with mute stones and shells and plants and dead birds and insects—that same science that fills our scientific volumes with coloured pictures true as life itself, and letter-press of prose description—that same science that anatomises the physical frame with microscopic nicety,—in the hand of its master, found in the soul, that which had most need of science; and his 'illustrated book' of it, the book of his experiments in it, comes to us filled with his yet living, 'ever living'subjects, and resounding with the tragedy of their complainings.
It requires but a little reading of that book to find, that the author of it is a philosopher who is strongly disposed to ascertain the limits of that thing in nature, which men call fortune,—that is, in their week-day speech,—they have another name for it 'o' Sundays.' He is greatly of the opinion, that the combined and legitimate use of those faculties with which man is beneficently 'armed against diseases of the world,' would tend very much to limit those fortuities and accidents, those wild blows,—those vicissitudes, that men, in their ignorance and indolent despair, charge on Fate or ascribe to Providence, while at the same time it would furnish the art ofaccommodatingthe human mind to that which is inevitable. It is not fortune who is blind, but man, he says,—a creature endowed of nature for his place in nature, endowed of God with a godlike faculty, looking before and after—a creature who has eyes, eyes adapted to his special necessities, but one that will not use them.
Acquaintance with law, as it is actual in nature, and inventions of arts based on that acquaintance, appear to him to open a large field of relief to the human estate, a large field of encroachment on that human misery, which men have blindly and stupidly acquiesced in hitherto, as necessity. For this is the philosopher who borrows, on another page, an ancient fable to teach us that that is not the kind of submission which is pleasing to God—that that is not the kind of 'suffering' that will ever secure his favour. He, for one, is going to search this social misery to the root, with that same light which the ancient wise man tells us, 'is as the lamp of God, wherewith He searcheth the inwardness of all secrets.'