'But whatever I deliver myself to be, provided it be such as I really am, I have my end; neither will I make any excuse for committing to paper such mean and frivolous things as these; the meanness of thesubjectcompels me to it.'—'Human reason is a two-edgedand adangerous sword. Observe, in the hand ofSocrates, her most intimate and familiar friend,how many points it has. Thus, I am good for nothing but to follow, and suffer myself to be easily carried away with the crowd.'—'I have this opinion ofthese political controversies: Be on what side you will, you have as fair a game to play as your adversary, provided you do not proceed so far as to jostleprinciples that are too manifest to be disputed; and yet, 'tismynotion, in public affairs[hear],there is no governmentso ill,provided it be ancient, and has beenconstant, that is not better than change and alteration. Our manners are infinitely corrupted, and wonderfully incline to grow worse: of our laws and customs,there are many that are barbarous and monstrous: nevertheless, by reason of the difficulty of reformation, and the danger of stirring things,if I could put something under to stay the wheel, and keep it where it is,I would do so with all my heart. It is very easy to beget in a people a contempt of its ancient observances;never any man undertook, but he succeeded; but to establish a better regimen in the stead of that a man has overthrown, many who have attempted this have foundered in the attempt. I very little consultmy prudence[philosophic 'prudence'] in my conduct. I am willing to let it be guided bypublic rule.
'In fine, to return to myself, the only things by whichIesteemmyselfto be something, isthat wherein never any manthought himself to be defective.My recommendation is vulgar and common; for whoever thoughthewanted sense. It would be aproposition that would imply a contradiction in itself; [in such subtleties thickly studding this popular work, the clues which link it with other works of this kind are found—the clues to a newpractical human philosophy.] 'Tis a disease that never is where it is discerned; 'tis tenacious and strong;but the first ray of the patient's sightdoes nevertheless pierce it through and disperse it, as the beams of the sun do a thick mist: toaccuse one's self, would be toexcuse one's selfin this case; and tocondemn, toabsolve. There never was porter, or silly girl, that did not think they had sense enough for their need. The reasons that proceed from the natural arguing of others, we think that if we had turned our thoughts that way, we should ourselves have found it out as well as they.Knowledge, style, and such parts as we see in other works, we are readily aware if they excel our own; but for the simple products of theunderstanding, every one thinks he could have found out the like, and is hardly sensible of the weight and difficulty, unless—and then with much ado—in an extreme and incomparable distance;and whoever should be able clearly to discernthe height of another's judgment, would be also ableto raise his own to the same pitch; so that this is a sort of exercise, from which a man is to expect very little praise, a kind of composition of small repute.And, besides, for whom do you write?'—for he is merely meeting this common sense. His object is merely to make his reader confess, 'That was just what I was about to say, it was just my thought; and if I did not express it so, it was only for want of language;'—'for whom do you write?The learned, to whom the authority appertains of judging books, know no other value but that of learning, and allow of no other process of wit but that of erudition and art. If you have mistaken one of the Scipios for another, what is all the rest you have to say worth? Whoever is ignorant of Aristotle, according to their rule, is in some sort ignorant of himself.Heavy and vulgar soulscannot discern the grace of a high and unfettered style. Now these two sorts of men make theworld. Thethird sort, into whose hands you fall, of souls that are regular, and strong of themselves, is so rare, that itjustlyhas neithername nor place amongst us, and it is pretty well time lost to aspire to it, or to endeavour to please it.' He will not content himself with pleasing the few. He wishes tomovethe world, and its approbation is a secondary question with him.
'He that should recordmyidle talk, to the prejudice of the most paltry law, opinion, or custom of his parish, would do himself a great deal of wrong, and me too; for, in what I say, I warrant no other certainty, but 'tis what Ihad then in my thought, a thought tumultuous and wavering. ["I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet," says the offended king. "These words are not mine."Hamlet: "Nor minenow."] All I say is by way of discourse.I should not speak so boldly, if it were my due to be believed, and so I told a great man, who complained to me of the tartness and contention of my advice.' And, indeed, he would not, in this instance, that is very certain;—for he has been speaking on the subject of RELIGIOUS TOLERATION, and among other remarks, somewhat too far in advance of his time, he has let fall, by chance, such passages as these, which, of course, he stands ready to recall again in case any one is offended. ('These words are not mine, Hamlet.' 'Nor mine now.') 'Tokill men, a clear and shining light is required, and our life is too real and essential, to warrant these supernatural and fantastic accidents.' 'After all 'tis setting aman's conjecturesat a very high price tocause a man to be roasted alive upon them.' He does not look up at all, after making this accidental remark; for he is too much occupied with a very curious story, which happens to come into his head at that moment, of certain men, who being more profoundly asleep thanmen usually are, became, according to certain grave authorities, what in their dreams they fancied they were; and having mentioned one case sufficiently ludicrous to remove any unpleasant sensation or inquiry which his preceding allusion might have occasioned, he resumes, 'Ifdreams can sometimes so incorporate themselves with effects of life, I cannot believe that therefore our will should be accountable to justice.Which I say, as a man, who am neitherjudge nor privy counsellor, nor think myself, by many degrees, worthy so to be, but aman of the common sort, born and vowed to the obedience of the public realm, both inwordsandacts.
'Thoughtis free;—thoughtis free.'Ariel.
'Perceivingyou to be ready and prepared on one part, I propose to you on the other, with all the care I can, toclearyour judgment, not to enforce it. Truly,Ihave not only a great many humours, butalso a great many opinions[which I bring forward here, and assume as mine] that I wouldendeavourto makemy son dislike, if I had one. Thetruest, are not always the most commodious to man; he is of toowilda composition. "We speak of all things by precept and resolution," he continues, returning again to this covert question of toleration, and Lord Bacon complains also that that is the method in his meridian. They make me hate things that arelikely, when they impose them on me forinfallible. "Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy"—(or, as Lord Bacon expresses it, "wonder is the seed of knowledge")—enquiry the progress—ignorance the end. Ay, but there is a sort of ignorance,strong and generous, that yields nothingin honour and courage to knowledge, a knowledge, which to conceive, requiresno less knowledgethan knowledge itself.'
'I saw, in my younger days, a report of a process that Corras, a counsellor of Thoulouse, put in print.'—[The vain, egotistical, incoherent, rambling old Frenchman, the old Roman Catholic French gentleman, who is understood to be the author of this new experiment in letters, was not far from being a middle-aged man, when the pamphlet which he here alludes to was first published; but his chronology, generally, does not bear a very close examination. Some very extraordinary anachronisms, which the critics are totally at a loss to account for, have somehow slipped into his story. Therewasa young philosopher in France in those days, of a most precocious, and subtle, and inventive genius—of a most singularly artistic genius, combining speculation and practice, as they had never been combined before, and already busying himself with all sorts of things, and among other things, with curious researches in regard to ciphers, and other questions not less interesting at that time;—there was a youth in France, whose family name was also English, living there with his eyes wide open, a youth who had found occasion toinventa cipher of his own even then, into whose hands that publication might well have fallen on its first appearance, and one on whose mind it might very naturally have made the impression here recorded. But let us return to the story.]—'I saw in my younger days, a report of a process, that Corras, a counsellor of Thoulouse, put in print, of a strange accident oftwo men, who presented themselves the one for the other. I remember, and I hardly remember anything else, that he seemed to have renderedthe imposture of him whom he judged to be guilty, so wonderful, and so far exceeding both our knowledge and his who was the judge, that I thought it a very bold sentence that condemned him to be hanged. [That is the point.]Let us take upSOME FORM of ARREST, that shall say, THE COURTunderstands nothing of the matter, more freely and ingenuously than the Areopagites did,who ordered the parties to appear again in a hundred years.' We must not forget that these stories 'are not regarded by the author merely for the use he makes of them,—that they carry, besides what he applies them to, the seeds of a richer and bolder matter, and sometimes collaterally amore delicate sound, both to the author himself who declines saying anything more about itin that place, and to others who shall happen to be of his ear!' One already prepared by previous discovery of the method of communication here indicated, and by voluminous readings in it, to understand that appeal, begs leave to direct the attention of the critical reader to the delicate collateral sounds in the story last quoted.
It is not irrelevant to notice that this story is introduced to the attention of the reader, 'who will, perhaps, see farther into it than others,' in that chapter on toleration in which it is suggested that considering the fantastic, and unscientific, and unsettled character of the human beliefs and opinions, and that even 'the Fathers' have suggested in their speculations on the nature of human life, that what men believed themselves to be, in their dreams, they really became, it is after all setting a man's conjectures at a very high price to cause a man to be roasted alive on them; the chapter in which it is intimated that considering the natural human liability to error, a little more room for correction of blunders, a little larger chance of arriving at the common truth, a little more chance for growth and advancement in learning, would, perhaps, on the whole, be likely to conduce to the human welfare, instead of sealing up the human advancement for ever, with axe and cord and stake and rack, within the limits of doctrines which may have been, perhaps, the very wisest, the most learned, of which the world was capable, at the time when their form was determined. It is the chapter which he calls fancifully, a chapter 'oncripples,' into which this odd story about the two men who presented themselves, the one for the other, in a manner so remarkable, is introduced, forlamenessis always this author's grievance, wherever we find him, and he is driven to all sorts of devices to overcome it; for he is the person who came prepared to speak well, and who hates that sort of speaking, where a man reads his speech, because he is one who could naturally give it a grace by action, or as another has it, he is one who would suit the action to the word.
But it was not the question of 'hanging' only, or 'roasting alive,' that authors had to consider with themselves in these times. For those forms of literary production which an author's literary taste, or his desire to reach and move and mould the people, might incline him to select—the most approved forms of popular literature, were in effect forbidden to men, bent, as these men were, on taking an active part in the affairs of their time. Any extraordinary reputation for excellence in these departments, would hardly have tended to promote the ambitious views of the young aspirant for honors in that school of statesmanship, in which the 'Fairy Queen' had been scornfully dismissed, as 'an old song.' Even that disposition to the gravest and profoundest forms of philosophical speculation, which one foolish young candidate for advancement was indiscreet enough to exhibit prematurely there, was made use of so successfully to his disadvantage, that for years his practical abilities were held in suspicion on that very account, as he complains. The reputation of aPhilosopherin those days was quite as much as this legal practitioner was willing to undertake for his part. That of aPoetmight have proved still more uncomfortable, and more difficult to sustain. His claim to a place in the management of affairs would not have been advanced by it, in the eyes of those old statesmen, whose favour he had to propitiate. However, he was happily relieved from any suspicion of that sort. If those paraphrases of the Psalms for which he chose to make himself responsible,—if those Hebrew melodies of his did not do the business for him, and clear him effectually of any such suspicion in the eyes of that generation, it is difficult to say what would. But whether his devotional feelings were really of a kind to require any such painful expression as that on their own account, may reasonably be doubted by any one acquainted at all with his general habits of thought and sentiment. These lyrics of the philosopher appear on the whole to prove too much; looked at from a literary point of view merely, they remind one forcibly of the attempts of Mr.Silenceat a Bacchanalian song. 'I have a reasonable good ear in music,' says the unfortunate Pyramus, struggling a little with that cerebral development and uncompromising facial angle which he finds imposed on him. 'I have a reasonable good ear in music: let us have the tongs and the bones.'
'A man must framesome probable cause, why he should not do his best, and why he should dissemble his abilities,' says this author, speaking ofcolour, or the covering of defects; and that the prejudice just referred to was not peculiar to the English court, the remarkable piece of dramatic criticism which we are about to produce from this old Gascon philosopher's pages, may or may not indicate, according as it is interpreted. It serves as an introduction to the passage in which the author's double meaning, and the occasionally double sound of his stories is noted. In the preceding chapter, it should be remarked, however, the author has been discoursing in high strains, upon the vanity of popular applause, or of any applause but that of reason and conscience; sustaining himself with quotations from the Stoics, whose doctrines on this point he assumes as the precepts of a true and natural philosophy; and among others the following passage was quoted:—[Taken from an epistle of Seneca, but including a quotation from a letter of Epicurus, on the same subject.]—'Remember him who being asked why he took so much pains in an art that could come to the knowledge of but few persons, replied, "A few are enough for me. I have enough with one, I have enough with never a one." He said true; yourself and a companionaretheatre enough to one another, oryoutoyourself. Let us be to youthe whole people, and the whole people to you butone. You should do like the beasts of chase whoefface the track at the entrance into their den.' But this author's comprehensive design embraces all the oppositions in human nature; he thinks it of very little use to preach to men from the height of these lofty philosophic flights, unless you first dive down to the platform of their actualities, and by beginning with the secret of what they are, make sure that you take them with you. So then the latent human vanity, must needs be confessed, and instead of taking it all to himself this time, poor Cicero and Pliny are dragged up, the latter very unjustly, as the commentator complains, to stand the brunt of this philosophic shooting.
'But this exceeds all meanness of spirit inpersons of such quality as they were, to think to derive any glory from babbling and prating,even to the making use of their private letters to their friends, and so withal thatthough some of themwere never sent, the opportunity being lost, they nevertheless published them; with this worthy excuse, that they were unwilling to lose their labour, and have their lucubrations thrown away.'—Was it not well becoming two consuls of Rome,sovereign magistrates of the republic, thatcommanded the world, to spend their time in patching up elegant missives, in order to gain the reputation of being well versedin their own mother tongue? What could a pitiful schoolmaster have done worse, who got his living by it? If theactsof Xenophon and Caesar had not far transcended their eloquence, I don't believe they would ever have taken the pains towritethem. They made it their business to recommend not theirsaying, but theirdoing. The companions of Demosthenes in the embassy to Philip, extolling that prince as handsome, eloquent, and a stout drinker, Demosthenes said that those were commendations more proper for a woman, an advocate, or a sponge. 'Tis nothis professionto know either how to hunt, or to dance well.
Orabunt causas alii, coelique meatusDescribent radio, et fulgentia sidera dicent,Hic regere imperio populos sciat.
Plutarch says, moreover, that to appear so excellent in these less necessary qualities, is to produce witness against a man's self, that he has spent his time and study ill, which ought to have been employed in the acquisition of more necessary and more useful things. Thus Philip, King of Macedon, having heardthe great Alexander, his son,sing at a feastto thewonder and envy of the best musiciansthere. 'Art thou not ashamed,' he said to him, 'tosing so well?' And to the same Philip, a musician with whom he was disputing about something concerning his art, said, 'Heaven forbid, sir, that so great a misfortune should ever befall you as to understand these things better than I.' Perhaps this author might have made a similar reply, hadhisbeen subjected to a similar criticism. And Lord Bacon quotes this story too, as he does many others, which this author hasfirst selected, and for the same purpose; for, not content with appropriating his philosophy, and pretending to invent his design and his method, he borrows all his most significant stories from him, and brings them in to illustrate the same points, and the points are borrowed also: he makes use, indeed, of his common-place book throughout in the most shameless and unconscionable manner. 'Rack his style, Madam,rack his style?' he said to Queen Elizabeth, as he tells us, when she consulted him—he being then of her counsel learned, in the case of Dr. Hayward, charged with having written 'the book of the deposing of Richard the Second, and thecoming inof Henry the Fourth,' and sent to the Tower for that offence. The queen was eager for a different kind of advice. Racking an author's book did not appear to her coarse sensibilities, perfectly unconscious of the delicacy of an author's susceptibilities, a process in itself sufficiently murderous to satisfy her revenge. There must be some flesh and blood in the business before ever she could understand it. She wanted to have 'the question' put to that gentleman as to his meaning in the obscure passages in that work under the most impressive circumstances; and Mr. Bacon,himselfan author, being of her counsel learned, was requested to make out a case of treason for her; and wishes from such a source were understood to be commands in those days. Now it happened that one of the managers and actors at the Globe Theatre, who was at that time sustaining, as it would seem, the most extraordinary relations of intimacy and friendship with the friends and patrons of this same person, then figuring as the queen's adviser, had recently composed a tragedy on this very subject; though that gentleman, more cautious than Dr. Hayward, and having, perhaps, some learned counsel also, had taken the precaution to keep back the scene of the deposing of royalty during the life-time of this sharp-witted queen, reserving its publication for the reign of her erudite successor; and the learned counsel in this case being aware of the fact, may have felt some sympathy with this misguided author. 'No, madam,' he replied to her inquiry, thinking to take off her bitterness with a merry conceit, as he says, 'for treason I cannotdeliver opinion that there is any, but very much felony.' The queen apprehending it gladly, asked, 'How?' and 'wherein?' Mr. Bacon answered, 'Because he had stolen many of his sentences and conceits out of Cornelius Tacitus.' It would do one good to see, perhaps, how many felonious appropriations of sentences, and quotations, and ideas, the application he recommends would bring to light in this case.
But the instances already quoted are not the only ones which this free spoken foreign writer, this Elizabethan genius abroad, ventures to adduce in support of this position of his, that statesmen—men who aspire to the administration of republics or other forms of government—if they cannot consent on that account to relinquish altogether the company of the Muses, must at least so far respect the prevailing opinion on that point, as to be able to sacrifice to it the proudest literary honours. Will the reader be pleased to notice, not merely the extraordinary character of the example in this instance, butthe groundsof the assumption which the critic makes with so much coolness.
'And could the perfection of eloquence have added any lustre proportionable to the merit of a great person, certainly Scipio and Laelius had never resigned the honour of their comedies, with all theluxuriancies and delicacies of the Latin tongue, to an African slave, for that the work was THEIRSits beauty and excellencySUFFICIENTLY PROVE.' [This is from a book in which the supposed autograph of Shakspere is found; a work from which he quotes incessantly, and from which he appears, indeed, to have taken the whole hint of his learning.] 'Besides Terence himself confesses as much, and I should take it ill in any one that woulddispossess meof thatbelief.' For, as he says in another place, in a certain deeply disguised dedication which he makes of the work of a friend, a poet, whose early death he greatly lamented, and whom he is 'determined,' as he says, 'to revive and raise again to life if he can:' 'As we often judge of the greater by the less, andas the very pastimesof great men give an honourable idea to the clear-sightedof the sourcefrom which they spring, I hope you will, by this work of his, rise to the knowledge of himself, and by consequence love and embrace his memory. In so doing, you will accomplish what he exceedingly longed for whilst he lived.' But here he continues thus, 'I have, indeed, in my time known some, who, by a knack of writing, have got both title and fortune, yet disown their apprenticeship,purposely corrupt their style,and affect ignorance of so vulgar a quality (whichalso our nation observes, rarely to be seenin very learned hands), carefully seeking a reputation by better qualities.'
I once did hold it, as our statists do, a baseness to write fair: but now it did me yeoman's service.—Hamlet.
And it is in the next paragraph tothis, that he takes occasion to mention that his stories and allegations do not always serve simply for example, authority, or ornament; that they are not limited in their application to the use he ostensibly makes of them, but that they carry, for those who are in his secret, other meanings, bolder and richer meanings, and sometimes collaterally a more delicate sound. And having interrupted the consideration upon Cicero and Pliny, and their vanity and pitiful desire for honour in future ages, with this criticism on the limited sphere of statesmen in general, and the devices to whichLælius and Scipiowere compelled to resort, in order to gettheirplays published without diminishing the lustre of their personal renown, and having stopped to insert that most extraordinary avowal in regard to his two-fold meanings in his allegations and stories, he returns to the subject of this correspondence again, for there is more in this also than meets the ear; and it is notPliny, andCiceroonly, whose supposed vanity, and regard for posthumous fame, as men of letters, is under consideration. 'But returning to thespeaking virtue;' he says, 'I findno great choicebetween not knowing to speakanything but ill, and not knowing anything butspeaking well. The sages tell us, that as to what concernsknowledgethere is nothing butphilosophy, and as to what concernseffectsnothing butvirtue, that is generally proper to all degrees and orders. There is something likethis in these two otherphilosophers, forthey also promiseETERNITY to the letters they write to their friends, but 'tisafter another manner, and by accommodating themselvesfor a good endto the vanity ofanother; for they write to them that if the concern of making themselves known to future ages, and the thirst of glory, do yetdetainthem in the management of public affairs, and make them fear the solitude and retirement to which they would persuade them; let them never trouble themselves more about it, forasmuch as they shall have credit enough with posterity to assure them that, were there nothing else but thelettersthus writ to them, those letters will render their names as known and famous as theirown public actionsthemselves could do. [And that—thatis the key to the correspondence betweentwo otherphilosophers enigmatically alluded to here.] And besides this difference,' for it is 'these two other philosophers,' and not Pliny and Cicero, and not Seneca and Epicurus alone, that we talk of here, 'and besidesthis difference, theseare notidleandemptyletters, that contain nothing but a fine jingle of well chosen words, and fine couched phrases; but replete andabounding with grave and learned discourses, by which a man may render himself—not more eloquent but morewise, and that instruct us not tospeakbutto do well'; for that is the rhetorical theory that was adopted by the scholars and statesmen then alive, whose methods of making themselves known to future ages he is indicating, even in these references to the ancients. 'Awaywith thateloquencewhich so enchants us with itsharmonythat we should more study it thanthings'; for this is the place where the quotation with which our investigation of this theory commenced is inserted in the text, and here it is, in the light of these preceding collections of hints that he puts in the story first quoted, wherein he says, the nature of the orator will be much more manifestly laid open to us, than in that seeming care for his fame, or in that care of his style, for its own sake. It is the story of Eros, the slave, who brought the speaker word that the audience wasdeferred, when in composing a speech that he was to make in public, 'he found himself straitened intime, to fit his words to his mouth as he had a mind to do.'
Is the storm overblown? I hid me under the dead moon-calf's gaberdine for fear of the storm.—Tempest.
BUT as to this love of glory which the stoics, whom this philosopher quotes so approvingly, have measured at its true worth; as to this love of literary fame, this hankering after an earthly immortality, which he treats so scornfully in the Roman statesman, let us hear him again in another chapter, and see if we can find any thing wherebyhisnature and designs will more manifestly be laid open to us. 'Of all the foolish dreams in the world,' he says, that which is most universally received, is the solicitude of reputation and glory, which we are fond of to that degree as to abandon riches, peace, life, and health, which are effectual and substantial good, to pursue this vain phantom. And of all the irrational humours of men, it should seem that the philosophers themselves have the most ado, and do the least disengage themselves from this the most restive and obstinate of all the follies. There is not any one view of whichreasondoes so clearly accuse the vanity, as that; but it isso deeply rooted in us, that I doubt whether any one ever clearly freed himself from it, or no.After you have said all, and believed allthat has been said to its prejudice, it creates so intestine an inclinationin opposition to your best arguments, that you have little power and firmness to resist it;for(as Cicero says) even those who controvert it, would yet thatthe books they writeshould appear before the world withtheir names in the title page, and seek to derive glory from seeming to despise it. All other things are communicable and fall into commerce; we lend our goods—
[It irks me not that men my garments wear.]
and stake our lives for the necessities and service of our friends; but to communicate one's honour,and to robe another with one's own glory, is very rarely seen. And yet we have some examples of that kind. Catulus Luctatius, in the Cymbrian war, having done all that in him lay to make his flying soldiers face about upon the enemy,ran himself at last away with the rest, and counterfeited the coward, to the end that his men might rather seem to follow their captain, than to fly from the enemy; and after several anecdotes full of that inner significance of which he speaks elsewhere, in which he appears, but only appears, to lose sight of this question of literary honour, for they relate tomilitaryconflicts, he ventures to approach, somewhat cautiously and delicately, the latent point of his essay again, by adducing the example of persons,notconnected with the military profession, who have found themselves called upon in various ways, and by means of various weapons, to take part in these wars; who have yet, in consequence of certain 'subtleties of conscience,'relinquishedthehonourof their successes; and though there is no instance adduced of that particular kind of disinterestedness, in which an author relinquishes to another the honour of his title page, as the beginning might have led one to anticipate; on the whole, the not indiligent reader of this author's performances here and elsewhere, will feel that the subject which is announced as the subject of this chapter, 'Not to communicate a man's honour or glory,' has been, considering the circumstance, sufficiently illustrated.
'As women succeeding to peerageshad, notwithstanding their sex, the right to assist and give their votes in the causes that appertain to the jurisdiction of peers; so the ecclesiastical peers,notwithstanding their profession, were obliged toassist our kingsin their wars, not only with their friends and servants, but in their own persons. And he instances the Bishop of Beauvais, who took a gallant share in the battle of Bouvines, but did not think itfit for him to participate in the fruit and glory of that violent and bloody trade. He, with his own hand, reduced several of the enemy that day to his mercy, whom he delivered to the first gentleman he met, either to kill or to receive them to quarter,referring that part to another hand. As also did William, Earl of Salisbury, to Messire John de Neale, with a like subtlety of conscience to the other, he would KILL,butNOT WOUNDhim, andfor that reason, fought only with amace. And a certain person in my time, being reproached by the king that he hadlaid handson apriest, stiffly and positively denied it. The case was, he had cudgelled and kicked him.' And there the author abruptly, for that time, leaves the matter without any allusion to the case of still another kind of combatants, who, fighting with another kind of weapon, might also, from similar subtleties of conscience, perhaps think fit to devolve on others the glory of their successes.
But in a chapter onnames, in which, if he has not told, he hasdesigned to tell all; and what he could not express, he has at least pointed out with his finger, this subject is more fully developed. In this chapter, he regrets that such as writechronicles in Latindo not leave our names as they find them, for in making ofVaudemontVALLE-MONTANUS, and metamorphosing names to dress them out in Greek or Latin, we know not where we are, and with thepersonsofthe men, losethebenefitof thestory: but one who tracks the inner thread of this apparently miscellaneous collection of items, need be at no such loss in this case. But at the conclusion of this apparently very trivial talk aboutnames, he resumes his philosophic humour again, and the subsequent discourse on this subject, recalls once more, the considerations with which philosophy sets at nought the loss of fame, and forgets in the warmth that prompts to worthy deeds, the glory that should follow them.
'But this consideration—that is the consideration "that it is the custom inFrance, to call every man, even a stranger, by the name of anymanororseigneury, he may chance to come in possession of, tends to the total confusion of descents, so thatsurnamesare no security,"—"for," he says, "a younger brother of a good family, having amanorleft him by his father, by the name of which he has been known and honoured, cannot handsomely leave it; ten years after his decease, it falls into the hand of a stranger, who does the same." Do but judge whereabouts we shall be concerning the knowledge of these men. This consideration leads me therefore into another subject. Let us look a little more narrowly into, and examine upon what foundation we erect this glory and reputation, for which the world is turned topsy-turvy. Wherein do we place this renown, that we hunt after with such infinite anxiety and trouble. It is in the end PIERRE or WILLIAM that bears it, takes it into his possession, and whom only it concerns. Oh what a valiant faculty is HOPE, that in a mortal subject, and in a moment, makes nothing of usurping infinity, immensity, eternity, and of supplying her master's indigence, at her pleasure, with all things that he can imagine or desire. And this Pierre or William, what is it but a sound, when all is done, ("What's in a name?") or three or four dashes with a pen?'
And he has already written two paragraphs to show, that the name of William, at least, is not excepted from the general remarks he is making here on the vanity of names; while that of Pierre is five times repeated, apparently with the same general intention, and another combination of sounds is not wanting which serves with that free translation the author himself takes pains to suggest and defend, to complete what was lacking to that combination, in order to give these remarks their true point and significance, in order to redeem them from that appearance of flatness which is not a characteristic of this author's intentions, and in his style merely serves as an intimation to the reader that there is something worth looking for beneath it.
As to the name of William, and the amount of personal distinction which that confers upon its owners, he begins by telling us, that the name of Guienne is said to be derived from the Williams of our ancient Aquitaine, 'which would seem,' he says, rather far fetched, were there not as crude derivations in Plato himself, to whom he refers in other places for similar precedents; and when he wishes to excuse his enigmatical style—the titles of his chapters for instance. And by way of emphasizing this particular still further, he mentions, that on the occasion when Henry, the Duke of Normandy, the son of Henry the Second, of England, made a feast in France, the concourse of nobility and gentry was so great, that forsport's sakehe divided them intotroops, according to their names, and in thefirst troop, which consisted of Williams, there were found a hundred and ten knights sitting at the table of that name, without reckoning the simple gentlemen and servants.
And here he apparently digresses from his subject for the sake of mentioning the EmperorGeta, 'who distributed the several courses of his meats by thefirst letters of the meatsthemselves, where those that began withBwere served up together;asbrawn, beef, beccaficos, and so of the others.' This appears to be a little out of the way; but it is not impossible that there may be an allusion in it to the author's own family name ofEyquem, though that would be rather farfetched, as he says; but then there isPlatoat hand, still to keep us in countenance.
But to return to the point of digression. 'And this Pierre, or William, what is it but a sound when all is done?Orthree or four dashes with a pen,so easy to be varied, that I would fain know to whom is to be attributed the glory of so many victories, toGuesquin, to Glesquin, or toGueaguin. And yet there would be something more in the case than in Lucian that Sigma should serve Tau with a process, for "He seeks no mean rewards."The quere is here in good earnest. The point is, which ofthese lettersis to be rewarded for so many sieges, battles, wounds, imprisonment, and services done to the crown of France by this famous constable.Nicholas Denisotnever concernedhimselffurther thanthe letters of his name, of which he has altered thewhole contexture, to build up by anagramthe Count d'Alsinoiswhom he has endowed with the glory of his poetry and painting. [A good precedent—but here is a better one.] And the historian Suetonius looked only to themeaning of his; and so, cashiering hisfathers surname, Lenisleft Tranquillussuccessor to the reputation of his writings. Who would believe that the Captain Bayard should have no honour but what he derives from the great deeds of Peter (Pierre) Terrail, [the name of Bayard—"the meaning"] and that Antonio Escalin should suffer himself, to his face, to be robbed of the honour of so many navigations, and commands at sea and land, by Captain Poulin and the Baron de la Garde. [The name of Poulin was taken from the place where he was born, De la Garde from a person who took him in his boyhood into his service.] Who hinders my groom from calling himself Pompey the Great? But, after all, what virtue, what springs are there that convey to my deceased groom, or the other Pompey (who had his head cut off in Egypt), this glorious renown, and these so much honoured flourishes of the pen?' Instructive suggestions, especially when taken in connection with the preceding items contained in this chapter, apparently so casually introduced, yet all with a stedfast bearing on this question of names, and all pointing by means of a thread of delicate sounds, and not less delicate suggestions, to another instance, in which the possibility of circumstances tending to countervail the so natural desire to appropriate to the name derived from one's ancestors, the lustre of one's deeds, is clearly demonstrated.
''Tis with good reason that men decry the hypocrisy that is in war; for what is more easy to an old soldier than to shift in time of danger, and to counterfeit bravely, when he has no more heart than a chicken. There are so many ways to avoid hazarding a man's own person'—'and had we the use of the Platonic ring, which renders those invisible that wear it, if turned inwards towards the palm of the hand, it is to be feared that a great many would often hide themselves, when theyought to appear.' 'It seems that to be known,is in some sort to a man's life and its duration in another's keeping. I for my part, hold that I am wholly in myself, and that other life of mine which lies in the knowledge of my friends, considering it nakedly and simply in itself, I know very well that I am sensible of no fruit or enjoyment of it but by the vanity of a fantastic opinion; and, when I shall be dead, I shall be much less sensible of it, and shall withal absolutely lose the use of those real advantages that sometimes accidentally follow it. [That was Lord Bacon's view, too, exactly.] I shall have no more handle whereby to take hold of reputation, or whereby it may take hold of me: for to expect that my name should receive it, in the first place, I have no name that is enough my own. Of two that I have, one is common to all my race, and even to others also: there is one family at Paris, and another at Montpelier, whose surname isMontaigne; another in Brittany, and Xaintonge calledDe la Montaigne. The transposition ofone syllable onlyis enough to ravel our affairs, so that I shall peradventure share in their glory, and they shall partake of my shame; and, moreover, my ancestors were formerly surnamedEyquem, a name wherein afamily well known in Englandat this day is concerned. As to my other name, any one cantake it that will, andso, perhaps, I may honoura porterin my own stead. And, besides, though I had a particular distinction myself, what can it distinguish when Iam no more. Can it point out and favour inanity?
But will thy manes such a gift bestowAs to make violets from thy ashes grow?
'But of this I have spoken elsewhere.' He has—and to purpose.
But as to the authority for these readings, Lord Bacon himself will give us that; for this is the style which he discriminates so sharply as 'theenigmatical,' a style which he, too, finds to have been in use among the ancients, and which he tells ushas some affinitywith that new method of making over knowledge from the mind of the teacher to that of the pupil, which he terms the method ofprogression— (which is the method ofessaie)—in opposition to the received method, the only method he finds in use, which he, too, calls themagisterial. And this method of progression, with which the enigmatical has some affinity, is to be used, he tells us, in cases where knowledge is delivered as a thread to be spun on, where science is to be removed from one mind to anotherto grow from the root, and not delivered as trees for the use of the carpenter, wherethe rootis of no consequence. In this case, he tells us it is necessary for the teacher to descend tothe foundations of knowledge and consent, and so to transplant it into another as it grew in his own mind, 'whereas as knowledge is now delivered, there is akind of contract of errorbetween the deliverer and the receiver, for he that delivereth knowledge desireth to deliver it in such a form as maybest be believed, and not as may best beexamined: and he that receiveth knowledge desireth ratherpresent satisfactionthanexpectant inquiry, and so rathernot to doubt than not to err, glorymaking the author not to lay open his weakness, andslothmaking the disciplenot to know his strength.' Now, so very grave a defect as this, in the method of the delivery and tradition of Learning, would of course be one of the first things that would require to be remedied in any plan in which 'the Advancement' of it was seriously contemplated. And this method of the delivery and tradition of knowledge which transfersthe rootwith them, that they may grow in the mind of the learner, is the method which this philosopher professes to find wanting, and the one which he seems disposed to invent. He has made a very thorough survey of the stores of the ancients, and is not unacquainted with the more recent history of learning; he knows exactly what kinds of methods have been made use of by the learned in all ages, for the purpose of putting themselves into some tolerable and possible relations with the physical majority; he knows what devices they have always been compelled to resort to, for the purpose of establishing some more or less effective communication between themselves and that world to which they instinctively seek to transfer their doctrine. But this method, which he suggests here as the essential condition of the growth and advancement of learning, he doesnotfind invented. He refers to a method which he calls the enigmatical, which has an affinity with it, 'used in some cases by the discretion of the ancients,' but disgraced since, 'by the impostures of persons, who have made it as afalse lightfor their counterfeit merchandises.' The purpose of this latter style is, as he defines it, 'to remove thesecretsof knowledge from the penetration of the more vulgar capacities, and to reserve them toselected auditors, or to wits of such sharpness as can pierce the veil.' And that is a method, he tells us, which philosophy can by no means dispense with in his time, and 'whoever would let in new light upon the human understanding must still have recourse to it.' But the method of delivery and tradition in those ancient schools, appears to have been too much of the dictatorial kind to suit this proposer of advancement; its tendency was to arrest knowledge instead of promoting its growth. He is not pleased with the ambition of those old masters, and thinks they aimed too much at a personal impression, and that they sometimes undertook to impose their own particular and often very partial grasp of those universal doctrines and principles, which are and must be true for all men, in too dogmatical and magisterial a manner, without making sufficient allowance for the growth of the mind of the world, the difference of races, etc.
But if any doubt in regard to the use of the method described, in the composition of the work now first produced as AN EXAMPLE of the use of it, should still remain in any mind; or if this method of unravelling it should seem too studious, perhaps the author's own word for it in one more quotation may be thought worth taking.
'I can give no account of my life byMY ACTIONS, fortune has placedthemtoo low;I must do itBY MY FANCIES. And when shall I have done representing the continual agitation and change of my thoughts as they come into my head, seeing that Diomedes filled six thousand books upon the subject of grammar.' [The commentators undertake to set him right here, but the philosopher only glances in his intention at the voluminousness of the science ofwords, in opposition to the science ofthings, which he came to establish.] 'What must pratingproduce, since prating itself, and the first beginning to speak, stuffed the world with such a horrible load of volumes. So many words aboutwordsonly. They accused one Galba, of old, of living idly; he made answer that every one ought to give account of hisactions, butnotof hisleisure. He was mistaken, forjustice—[the civil authority]—has cognizance andjurisdictionover those thatdo nothing, or only PLAYatWORKING…. Scribbling appears to be the sign of a disordered age. Every man applies himself negligently to the duty of hisvocationat such a time and debauches in it.' From that central wrong of an evil government, an infectious depravity spreads and corrupts all particulars. Everything turns from its true and natural course. Thusscribblingis the sign of a disordered age. Men write in such times instead of acting; and scribble, or seem to perhaps, instead of writing openly to purpose.
And yet, again, that central, and so divergent, wrong is the result of each man's particular contribution, as he goes on to assert. 'The corruption of this age is made up by the particular contributions of every individual man,'—
He were no lion, were not Romans hinds.—Cassius.
'Some contributetreachery, othersinjustice, irreligion,tyranny,avariceandcruelty, according as they have power; theWEAKER SORT CONTRIBUTE FOLLY, VANITY,andIDLENESS, andof theseI am one.'
Caesarloves no plays as thou dost, Antony. Such men are dangerous.
Or, as the same poet expresses it in another Roman play:—
Thisdouble worship,Where one part doesdisdain with cause, the otherInsult without all reason; where gentry, title, wisdomCannot conclude but by theyea and noOfgeneral ignorance,—it must omitReal necessities—and give way the whileTo unstable slightness; purposeso barred,It follows, nothing is done to purpose.
And that is made the plea for an attempt to overthrow the popular power, and to replace it with a government containing the true head of the state, its nobility, its learning, its gentleness, its wisdom.
But the essayist continues:—'It seems as if it were the season forvain thingswhenthe hurtful oppress us; in a time when doing ill is common, to do nothing but whatsignifies nothingis a kind of commendation. 'Tismycomfort thatIshall be one of the last that shall be called in question,—for it would be against reasonto punish the less troublesomewhile we areinfestedwith thegreater.As the physiciansaid to one who presented him his finger to dress, and who, as he perceived, had an ulcerin his lungs, "Friend, it is not now time to concern yourself about your finger's ends."And yetI saw some years ago,a person, whose name and memory I have in very great esteem, in the very height of our great disorders, when there wasneither law nor justice put in execution, nor magistrate that performed his office,—no more than there is now,—publish I know not whatpitiful reformationsaboutclothes, cookeryandlaw chicanery.These are amusementswherewithto feed a people that are ill used, to show that they are not totally forgotten. These othersdo the same, who insist uponstoutly defendingtheformsofspeaking, dances and games to a people totally abandoned to all sorts of execrable vices—it is for the Spartans only to fall to combing and curling themselves, when they are just upon the point of running headlong into some extreme danger of their lives.
'Formy part, I haveyet a worsecustom. I scorn to mend myself by halves. If myshoego awry, I let my shirt and my cloak do so too: when I am out of order I feed on mischief. I abandon myself through despair, and let myself go towards the precipice, and as the saying is, throw the helve after the hatchet.' We should not need, perhaps, the aid of the explanations already quoted, to show us that the author does not confess this custom of his for the sake of commending it to the sense or judgment of the reader,—who sees it here for the first time it may be put into words or put on paper, who looks at it here, perhaps, for the first time objectively, from the critical stand-point which the review of another's confession creates; and though it may have been latent in the dim consciousness of his own experience, or practically developed, finds it now for the first time, collected from the phenomena of the blind, instinctive, human motivity, and put down on the page of science, as a principle in nature, in human nature also.
But this is indeed a Spartan combing and curling, that the author is falling to, in the introductory flourishes ('diversions' as he calls them) of this great adventure, that his pen is out for now: he is indeed upon the point of running headlong into the fiercest dangers;—it is the state, the wretched, discased, vicious state, dying apparently, yet full of teeth and mischief, that he is about to handle in his argument with these fine, lightsome, frolicsome preparations of his, without any perceptible 'mittens'; it is the heart of that political evil that his time groans with, and begins to find insufferable, that he is going to probe to the quick with that so delicate weapon. It is a tilt against the block and the rack, and all the instruments of torture, that he is going to manage, as handsomely, and with as many sacrifices to the graces, as the circumstances will admit of. But the political situation which he describes so boldly (and we have already seen what it is) affects us here in its relation to the question of style only, and as the author himself connects it with the point of our inquiry.
'A man may regret,' he says, 'the better times, but cannot fly from the present, we may wish for other magistrates, but we must, notwithstanding, obey those we have; and, peradventure, it is more laudable to obey the bad than the good, so long as the image of the ancient and received laws of this monarchy shall shine in any corner of the kingdom. If they happen, unfortunately, to thwart and contradict one another, so as to produce two factions of doubtful choice,'—
And my soul achesTo know, [says Coriolanus] when two authorities are up,Neither supreme, how soon confusionMay enter 'twixt the gap of both, and takeThe one by the other.
—'in this contingency will willingly choose,' continues the other, 'to withdraw from the tempest, and in the meantime,nature or the hazards of war may lend me a helping hand. Betwixt Cæsar and Pompey, I should soon and frankly have declared myself, but amongst the three robbers that came after, a man must needshave either hid himself, or have gone along with the current of the time,which I think a man may lawfully do, when reason no longer rules.' 'Whitherdost thou wandering go?'
'Thismedleyis a little from my subject, I go out of my way but 'tis ratherby licence than oversight. My fanciesfollowone another,but sometimes at a great distance, andlook towards one another, but 'tis with anoblique glance. I have read a DIALOGUE of PLATO of such amotley and fantasticcomposition. Thebeginning was about love, and all the rest ABOUT RHETORIC.Theystick not (that is, the ancients) at these variations, and have a marvellous grace in letting themselves to be carried away at the pleasure of the winds; or at least toseemas if they were. The titles of my chapters do not always comprehend the whole matter, they often denote itby some mark only, as those other titlesAndria Eunuchus, or these,Sylla, Cicero, Torquatus. I lovea poetic march, by leaps and skips, 'tis an art, as Plato says, light, nimble; anda little demoniacal. There are places inPlutarchwhereheforgets his theme, where the proposition ofhisargument is only foundincidentally, and stuffed throughout with foreign matter. Do but observe his meanders in the Demon of Socrates. How beautiful are his variations and digressions; and thenmost of all, when they seem to befortuitous, [hear] and introducedfor want of heed. 'Tis the indiligent readerthat loses my subject—not I. There will always be found some wordsorother in a corner that are to the purpose, though it lie very close[that is the unfailing rule]. I ramble about indiscreetly and tumultously: my style and mywitwander at the same rate, [he wanderswittingly]. Alittle follyisdesirablein himthat will not be guilty of stupidity, say the precepts, and much more theexamplesof our masters. A thousand poets flag and languish after aprosaic manner; but the best old prose, and I strew it here up and downindifferentlyfor verse, shines throughout with the vigor and boldness of poetry, and represents some air of its fury. Certainly, prose mustyieldthe pre-eminence in speaking. "The poet," says Plato, "when set upon the muse's tripod, pours out with fury, whatever comes into his mouth, like the pipe of a fountain,without considering and pausing upon what he says, and things come from him ofvarious colors, ofcontrary substance, and with an irregular torrent": he himself (Plato) is all over poetical, and all the old theology (as the learned inform us) is poetry, and thefirst philosophy, is the origiual language of the gods.
'I would have the matterdistinguish itself; it sufficiently showswhere it changes, where it concludes,where it begins, and where it resumes, without interlacing it with words of connection, introduced for the relief ofweak or negligent ears, and without commenting myself. Who is he that had not rather not be read at all, than after a drowsy orcursorymanner? Seeing I cannot fix the reader's attention by theweightof what I write,maneo male, if I should chanceto do it by my intricacies. [Hear]. I mortally hate obscurity andwould avoid it if I could. In such an employment, to whom you will not give an hour you will give nothing;and you do nothing for him for whom you only do, whilst you are doing something else. To which may be added, that I have, perhaps, some particular obligation to speak onlyby halves, to speakconfusedly and discordantly.'
But this is, perhaps, enough to show, in the way of direct assertion, that we have here, at least, a philosophical work composed in that style which Lord Bacon calls 'the enigmatical,' in which he tells us thesecretsof knowledge are reserved forselected auditors, or wits of such sharpness as can pierce the veil; a style which he, too, tells us was sometimes used by the discretion of the ancients, though he does not specify either Plutarch or Plato; in that place, and one which he introduces in connection with his new method of progression, in consequence of its having, as he tells us,some affinitywith it, and that we have here also a specimen of that new method itself, by means of which knowledge is to be delivered as a thread to be spun on.
But let us leave, for the present, this wondrous Gascon, though it is not very easy to do so, so long as we have our present subject in hand,—this philosopher, whose fancies look towards one another at such long, such very long distances, sometimes, though not always, with anobliqueglance, who dares to depend so much upon the eye of his reader, and especially upon the reader of that 'far-off' age he writes to. It would have been indeed irrelevant to introduce the subject of this foreign work and its style in this connection without further explanation, but for the identity of political situation already referred to, and but for those subtle, interior, incessant connections with the higher writings of the great Elizabethan school, which form themain characteristicof this production. The fact, that this work was composed in the country in which the chief Elizabethan men attained their maturity, that it dates from the time in which Bacon was completing his education there, that it covers ostensibly not the period only, but the scenes and events of Raleigh's six years campaigning there, as well as the fact alluded to by this author himself, in a passage already quoted,—the fact that there was a family then in England,very well known, who bore the surname of his ancestors, a family of the name ofEyquem, he tells us with whom, perhaps, he still kept up some secret correspondence and relations, the fact, too, which he mentions in his chapter on Names, that a surname in France is very easily acquired, and is not necessarily derived from one's ancestors,—that same chapter in which he adduces so many instances of men who, notwithstanding that inveterate innate love of the honour of one's own proper name, which is in men of genius still more inveterate,—have for one reason or another been willing to put upon anagrams, or synonyms, or borrowed names, all their honours, so that in the end it is William or Pierre who takes them into his possession, and bears them, or it's the name of 'an African slave' perhaps, or the name of a 'groom' (promoted, it may be, to the rank of a jester, or even to that of a player,) that gets all the glory. All these facts, taken in connection with the conclusions already established, though insignificant in themselves, will be found anything but that for the philosophical student who has leisure to pursue the inquiry.
And though the latent meanings, in which the interior connections and identities referred to above are found, are not yet critically recognised, a latent national affinity and liking strong enough to pierce this thin, artificial, foreign exterior, appears to have been at work here from the first. For though the seed of the richer and bolder meanings from which the author anticipated his later harvest, could not yet be reached, that new form of popular writing, that effective, and vivacious mode of communication with the popular mind on topics of common concern and interest, not heretofore recognised as fit subjects for literature, which this work offered to the world on its surface, was not long in becoming fruitful. But it was on the English mind that it began to operate first. It was in England, that it began so soon to develop the latent efficacies it held in germ, in the creation of that new and widening department in letters—that so new, so vast, and living department of them, which it takes today all our reviews, and magazines, and journals, to cover. And the work itself has been from the first adopted, and appropriated here, as heartily as if it had been an indigenous production, some singularly distinctive product too, of the so deeply characterised English nationality.
But it is time to leave this wondrous Gascon, this new 'Michael of the Mount,' this man who is 'consubstantial with his book,'—this 'Man of the Mountain,' as he figuratively describes it. Let us yield him this new ascent, this new triumphant peak and pyramid in science, which he claims to have been the first to master,—the unity of the universal man,—the historical unity,—the universal human form, collected from particulars, not contemplatively abstracted,—the inducted Man of the new philosophy. 'Authors,' he says, 'havehithertocommunicated themselves to the people by someparticularandforeignmark;I, the first of any by my universal being, asMichaelde Montaigne, I propose a life mean and without lustre: all moral philosophy is applied as well to a private life as to one of the greatest employment.Every mancarriesthe entire form of the human condition…I, the first of any by my universal being, asMichael,'—see the chapter on names,—'asMichaelde Montaigne.' Let us leave him for the present, or attempt to, for it is not very easy to do so, so long as we have our present subject in hand.
For, as we all know, it is from this idle, tattling, rambling old Gascon—it is from this outlandish looker-on of human affairs, that our Spectators and Ramblers and Idlers and Tattlers, trace their descent; and the Times, and the Examiners, and the Observers, and the Spectators, and the Tribunes, and Independents, and all the Monthlies, and all the Quarterlies, that exercise so large a sway in human affairs to-day, are only following his lead; and the best of them have not been able as yet to leave him in the rear. But how it came to pass, that a man of this particular turn of mind, who belonged to the old party, and the times that were then passing away, should have felt himself called upon to make this great signal for the human advancement, and how it happens that these radical connections with other works of that time, having the same general intention, are found in the work itself,—these are points which the futurebiographersof this old gentleman will perhaps find it for their interest to look to. And a little of that more studious kind of reading which he himself so significantly solicited, and in so many passages, will inevitably tend to the elucidation of them.
'The secrets of nature have not more gift in taciturnity.'
Troilus and Cressida.
'I did not think that Mr. Silence had been a man of this mettle.'
Falstaff.
'PROSPERO.—Go bring THE RABBLE,
O'er whom I give thee power, here, to this place.'
Tempest.
But though a foreign philosopher may venture to give us the clue to it, perhaps, in the first instance, a little more roundly, it is not necessary that we should go the Mayor of Bordeaux, in order to ascertain on the highest possible authority, what kind of an art of communication, what kind of an art of delivery and tradition, men, in such circumstances, find themselves compelled to invent;—that is, if they would not be utterly foiled for the want of it, in their noblest purposes;—we need not go across the channel to find the men themselves, to whom this art is a necessity,—men so convinced that they have a mission of instruction to their kind, that they will permit no temporary disabilities to divert them from their end,—men who must needs open their school, no matter what oppositions there may be, to be encountered, no matter what imposing exhibitions of military weapons may be going on just then, in their vicinity; and though they should find themselves straitened in time, and not able to fit their words to their mouths as they have a mind to, though they should be obliged to accept the hint from the master in the Greek school, and take their tonefrom the ear of those to whom they speak, though many speeches which would spend their use among the men then living would have to be inserted in their most enduring works with a private hint concerning that necessity, and a private reading of them for those whom it concerned; thoughthe audiencethey are prepared to addressshould be deferred, though the benches of the inner school should stand empty for ages. We need not go abroad at all to discover men of this stamp, and their works and pastimes, and their arts of tradition;—men so filled with that which impels men to speak, that speak they must, and speak they will, in one form or another, by word or gesture, by word or deed, though they speak to the void waste, though they must speak till they reach old ocean in his unsunned caves, and bring him up with the music of their complainings, though the marble Themis fling back their last appeal, though they speak to the tempest in his wrath, to the wind and the rain, and the fire and the thunder,—men so impregnated with that which makes the human speech, that speak they will, though they have but a rusty nail, wherewith to etch their story, on their dungeon wall; though they dig in the earth and bury their secret, as one buried his of old—that same secret still; for it is still those EARS—those 'ears' that 'Midas hath' which makes the mystery.
They know that the days are coming when the light will enter their prison house, and flash in its dimmest recess; when the light they sought in vain, will be there to search out the secrets they are forbid. They know that the day is coming, when the disciple himself, all tutored in the art of their tradition, bringing with him the key of its delivery, shall be there to unlock those locked-up meanings, to spell out those anagrams, to read those hieroglyphics, to unwind with patient loving research to its minutest point, that text, that with such tools as the most watchful tyranny would give them, they will yet contrive to leave there. They know that their buried words are seeds, and though they lie long in the earth, they will yet spring up with their 'richer and bolder meanings,' and publish on every breeze, their boldest mystery.
For let not men of narrower natures fancy that such action is not proper to the larger one, and cannot be historical. For there are differentkindsof men, ourscienceof men tells us, and that is an unscientific judgment which omits 'theparticular addition, that bounteous nature hath closed in each,'—her 'addition to the bill that writes them all alike.' For there is a kind of men 'whose minds are proportioned to that which may be dispatched at once, or within a short return of time, and there is another kind, whose minds are proportioned to that which begins afar off, and is to be won with length of pursuit,'—so the Coryphæus of those choir that the latter kind compose, informs us, 'so that there may be fitly said to be alonganimity, which is commonly also ascribed to God as a magnanimity.'
And our English philosophers had to light what this one calls a new 'Lamp of Tradition,' before they could make sure of transmitting their new science, through such mediums as those that their time gave them; and a very gorgeous many-branched lamp it is, that the great English philosopher brings out from that 'secret school of living Learning and living Art' to which he secretly belongs, for the admiration of the professionally learned of his time, and a very lustrous one too, as it will yet prove to be, when once it enters the scholar's apprehension that it was ever meant be lighted, when once the little movement that turns on the dazzling jet is ordered.
For we have all been so taken up with the BaconianLogichitherto and its wonderful effects in the relief of the human estate, that the Baconian RHETORIC has all this time escaped our notice; and nobody appears to have suspected that there was anything inthatworth looking at; any more than they suspect that there is anything in some of those other divisions which the philosopher himself lays so much stress on his proposal for the Advancement of Learning,—in his proposal for the advancement of it intoallthe fields of human activity. But we read this proposition still, as James the First was expected to read it, and all these departments which are brought into that general view in such a dry and formal and studiously scholastic manner, appear to be put there merely to fill up a space; and because the general plan of this so erudite performance happened to include them.
For inasmuch as the real scope and main bearing of this proposition, though it is in factthere, is of coursenotthere, in any such form as to attract the particular attention of the monarch to whose eye the work is commended; and inasmuch as the new art of a scientific Rhetoric is already put to its most masterly use in reserving that main design, for such as may find themselves able to receive it, of course, the need of any such invention is not apparent on the surface of the work, and the real significance of this new doctrine of Art and its radical relation to the new science, is also reserved for that class of readers who are able to adopt the rules of interpretation which the work itself lays down. Because the real applications of the New Logic could not yet be openly discussed, no one sees as yet, that there was, and had to be, a Rhetoric to match it.
For this author, who was not any less shrewd than the one whose methods we have just been observing a little, had also early discovered in the great personages of his time, a disposition to moderate his voice whenever he went to speak to them on matters of importance, in his natural key, for his voice too, was naturally loud, and high as he gives us to understand, though he 'couldspeak small like a woman'; he too had learned to take the tonefrom the ear of him to whom he spake, and he too had learned, that it was not enough merely to speak so as to make himself heard by those whom he wished to affect. He also had learned to speak according to the affair he had in hand, according to the purpose which he wished to accomplish. He also is of the opinion that different kinds ofaudiencesand differenttimes, require different modes of speech, and though he found it necessary to compose his works in the style and language of his own time, he was confident that it was a language which would not remain in use for many ages; and he has therefore provided himself with another, more to his mind which he has taken pains to fold carefully within the other, and one which lie thinks will bear the wear and tear of those revolutions that he perceives to be imminent.
But in consequence of our persistent oversight of this Art of Tradition, on which he relies so much, (which is as fine an invention of his, as any other of his inventions which we find ourselves so much the better for), that appeal to 'the times that are farther off,' has not yet taken effect, and the audience for whom he chiefly laboured is still 'deferred.'
This so noble and benign art which he calls, with his own natural modesty and simplicity, the Art ofTradition, this art which grows so truly noble and worthy, so distinctively human, in his clear, scientific treatment of it,—in his scientific clearance of it from the wildnesses and spontaneities of accident, or the superfluities and trickery of an art without science,—that stops short of the ultimate, the human principle,—this so noble art of speech or tradition is, indeed, an art which this great teacher and leader of men will think it no scorn to labour: it is one on which, even such a teacher can find time to stop; it is one which even such a teacher can stop to build from the foundation upwards, he will not care how splendidly; it is one on which he will spend without stint, and think it gain to spend, the wealth of his invention.
But, at the same time, it is with him asubordinateart. It has no worth or substance in itself; it borrows all its worth from that which masters and rigorously subdues it to its end. Here, too, we find ourselves coming down on all its old ceremonial and observance, from that new height which we found our foreign philosopher in such quiet possession of,—taking his way at a puff through poor Cicero's periods,—those periods which the old orator had taken so much pains with, and laughing at his pains:—but this English philosopher is more daring still, for it is he who disposes, at a word, without any comment, just in passing merely,—from his practical stand-point,—of 'the flutes and trumpets of the Greeks,' like the other making nothing at all in his theory of criticism ofmereelegance, though it is the Gascon, it is true, who undertakes the more lively and extreme practical demonstrations of this theoretical contempt of it,—setting it at nought, and flying in the face of it,—writing in as loquacious and homely a style as he possibly can, just for the purpose for setting it at nought, though not without giving us a glimpse occasionally, of a faculty that would enable him to mince the matter as fine as another if he should see occasion—as, perhaps, he may. For he talks very emphatically about hispoetryhere and there, and seems to intimate that he has a gift that way; and that he has, moreover, some works of value in that department of letters, which he is anxious to 'save up' for posterity, if he can. But here, it is the scholar, and not the loquacious old gentleman at all, who is giving us in his choicest, selectest, courtliest phrase, in his most stately and condensed style,hisviews of this subject; but that which is noticeable is, thatthe artin its fresh, new upspringing from the secret of life and nature, from the soul ofthings, the art and that which it springs from, is in these two so different formsidentical. Here, too, the point of its criticism and review is the same. 'Away with that eloquence that so enchants us withits harmonythat we should more study it thanthings'; but here the old Roman masters the philosopher, for a moment, and he puts in a scholarly parenthesis, 'unless you will affirm that of Cicero to be of so supreme perfection as to forma body of itself.'