"Lor. How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here we will sit, and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.

Sit, Jessica: look, how the floor of Heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold;
There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins:
Such harmony is in immortal souls;
But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.

Enter MUSICIANS.

Come, ho! and wake Diana with a hymn:
With sweetest touches pierce your mistress' ear,
And draw her home with music.

[Music.

Jess. I am never merry when I hear sweet music.
Lor. The reason is, your spirits are attentive:
For do but note a wild and wanton herd,
Or race of youthful and unhandled colts,

Fetching mad bounds, bellowing, and neighing loud,
Which is the hot condition of their blood;

If they but hear, perchance, a trumpet sound,
Or any air of music touch their ears,
You shall perceive them make a mutual stand.
Their savage eyes turn'd to a modest gaze
By the sweet power of music: therefore the poet
Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones, and floods;
Since nought so stockish, hard, and full of rage,
But music for the time doth change his nature.

The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,

Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils:

The motions of his spirit are dull as night,

And his affections dark as Erebus.

Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music." Act V. Sc. 1.

Here, we have not only the same general scope of thought, ideas, and imagery, but certain particular and unmistakable earmarks by which we may know the identity of the writer; as for instance, in the use of the phrases "sweet power of music" and "concord of sweet sounds," "sweetly touched" and "sweetest touches," the words "savage" and "silent,” the sound of "a trumpet " heard and a "hideous blast upon

a horn," the "motions of his spirit" and "the natural motion of the atom," and the discourse running on "the affections"; and in the prose, when the music ceases, every heart returns "to his own nature"; but in the poetry, "music for the time doth change his nature." And indeed the careful reader, who is familiar with his style and manner and diction, cannot fail to recognize him in every line.

Similar ideas touching the history of the human race and the order of divine providence in the creation are contained elsewhere in the writings of Bacon. Concerning the countries of the New World, then lately discovered, he says, "the great winding-sheets that bury all things in oblivion are two: deluges and earthquakes." He thought it probable that the people of the West Indies were "a newer and younger people than the people of the old world"; and he says, "it is much more likely that the destruction that hath heretofore been there was not by earthquakes (as the Egyptian priest told Solon concerning the Island of Atlantis, that it was swallowed by an earthquake), but rather that it was desolated by a particular deluge.. Their Andes, likewise, or mountains, are far higher than those with us; whereby it seems that the remnants of generation of men [reliquias stirpis hominum'] were in such a particular deluge saved":"

.....

I should report this now, would they believe me?

If I should say, I saw such islanders,

(For certes, these are people of the island)

Who, though they are of monstrous shape, yet, note,

Their manners are more gentle, kind, than of

Our human generation you shall find

Many, nay, almost any.

Pros. [Aside.]

Honest lord,

Thou hast said well; for some of you there present,

Are worse than devils."— Tempest, Act III. Sc. 3.

He thus distinctly intimates an opinion that the races of

1 Essay of the Vicissitude of Things.

Essays, Works (Mont.), I. 187–9; Works (Boston), XII. 274.

mankind, on different continents, had been subjected in each to a distinct series of geological changes in the surface of the globe, implying that the history of their origin must be carried so far back into "the dark backward and abysm of time" as to exhaust the antiquity of all historical, archæological or ethnological data, reaching far beyond the remotest tradition that has floated down on the stream of human memory even into purely geological time, and into the very "winding-sheets of oblivion," and that river of Lethe, which, he says, "runneth as well above ground as below"; an opinion that is fully confirmed by the later and more certain scientific demonstrations. 66 But," he continues, "in the other two destructions, by deluge and earthquake, it is further to be noted, that the remnant of people which happen to be reserved, are commonly ignorant and mountainous people, that can give no account of the time past; so that the oblivion is all one as if none had been left":

Who would believe that there were mountaineers

Dew-lapp'd like bulls, whose throats had hanging at 'em
Wallets of flesh? or that there were such men,

Whose heads stood in their breasts? which now we find
Each putter-out on five for one will bring us

Good warrant of.". Tempest, Act III. Sc. 3.

In these opinions we may discover traces, also, of Plato's account of the origin of the human race, which he conceived to be "from a length and infinity of time, and the mutations in it," and that there had been "frequent destructions of the human race through deluges and diseases and many other events, in which some small family of mankind was left"; and "that those who then escaped the destruction, were nearly some hill-shepherds, preserved on the tops (of mountains) like some slight fire preserving (careless) of the human race";1 that is, saved not so much by human care as by the divine providence; an opinion, by 1 Laws, Book III.; Works of Plato (Bohn), V. 78.

the way, that comes much nearer the truth of the matter than most modern inquiry.

So Bacon seems to have believed that some time far back in the series of these particular deluges, one continent or island may have been peopled from another, as when "the foul witch," Sycorax, with age and envy "grown into a hoop," mother of the "dull thing," Caliban, the born devil, on whose nature "nurture can never stick," came from Africa, banished "from Argier" to that uninhabited island which lay off somewhere toward "the still-vex'd Bermoothes": "Then was this island,

(Save for the son that she did litter here,

A freckled whelp, hag-born,) not honour'd with
A human shape." — Tempest, Act I. Sc. 2.

He agreed also with Aristotle, that there was a difference between the races of men, inhabiting different parts of the earth, and between man and man, not unlike that which exists between man and animals. "But for my part," says he, "I take it neither for a brag nor for a wish, but for a truth as he limiteth it. For he saith if there be found such an inequality between man and man as there is between man and beast, or between soul and body, it investeth a right of government: which seemeth rather an impossible case than an untrue sentence. But I hold both the judgment true and the case possible; and such as hath had, and hath a being, both in particular men and nations." And the play even ventures to go farther still, and to hint at a difference as wide as a difference of species in the genus (wherein, again, our modern science is also not far behind him) thus:

"1 Mur.

We are men, my liege.

Macb. Ay, in the catalogue ye go for men,

As hounds, and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs,
Shoughs, water-rugs, and demi-wolves, are clep'd
All by the name of dogs: the valued file
Distinguishes the swift, the slow, the subtle,
The house-keeper, the hunter, every one

According to the gift which bounteous Nature
Hath in him clos'd; whereby he does receive
Particular addition, from the bill

That writes them all alike: and so of men."

Macbeth, Act III. Sc. 1.

These learned investigations, together with the Summary (or Higher) Philosophy, of which Bacon had some knowledge, but of which such a man as William Shakespeare could have had but little notion, might lead up the author of the "Tempest" and the "Midsummer Night's Dream," beyond the Scriptural allegories of Noah's Ark and the Garden of Eden, to those more comprehensive and more profoundly philosophical conceptions of things, which are distinctly imaged forth in these beautiful dramas. At the same time, it will be borne in mind that the "Midsummer Night's Dream" was written as early as 1594, and the Tempest" in 1611, while the "New Atlantis was not written until after 1620, and the “Wisdom of the Ancients" was first printed (in Latin) in 1610; and this effectually excludes all possibility that William Shakespeare could have borrowed from Bacon in the writing of these plays. And the like is true in many other instances. On the other hand, like instances will be given to show, that Francis Bacon could not have borrowed from Shakespeare, otherwise than from himself.

66

Furthermore, it may be observed, in this connection, that those remarkable passages, which are most frequently quoted by the great lights of modern literature in proof of the deep insight of Shakespeare and his superiority as a poet, may be taken as evidence that the writer had attained to those deeply metaphysical ideas concerning the constitution of the universe and the nature and destiny of man in it, which have been entertained in any age, as they now are, by a small number of the profoundest thinkers and most rare and learned men only. The writings of Bacon, carefully studied, will show that he was familiar with these heights and depths, and that, having lighted his torch at