things, animate and inanimate, but the intelligence of man and animal only takes cognizance of the spirits of other things around them through the perforations of the senses; the eyes, ears, touch, taste and smell being, as it were, holes, through which the external universal vitality reaches into our vitality and stirs it to recognition. A solemn thought, doubtless true, and which should teach us modesty; for it would follow that we see not all God's works, but only those limited areas which come within the range of the peep-holes of our few senses. In other words, the space around us may be filled with forms, animate and inanimate, which hold "no points of agreement" with our senses, and of which, therefore, we can have no knowledge. And thus the dream of the schoolman of old may be true, that the space around us is filled as thick with spirits as the snow-storm is filled with snow-flakes.

This doctrine of spirits runs through all Bacon's writings. He says in one place:

All bodies have spirits and pneumatical parts within them. . . . But the spirits of things inanimate are shut in and cut off by the tangible parts.'

That is to say, they have no holes of the senses, through which the spirit of the inanimate object can communicate with us; any more than we could communicate with a human spirit, locked up in a body devoid of all the senses.

Again he says:

Spirits are nothing else but a natural body rarified to a proportion, and included in the tangible parts of bodies as in an integument; . and they are in all tangible bodies whatsoever, more or less.?

"

...

And again speaking of the superstition of the evil eye," he

says:

Besides, at such times [times of glory and triumph], the spirits of the persons envied do come forth most into the outward parts, and so meet the blow.3

Bacon does not speak, as we would, of the spirit in a man, but of the spirits, as if there were a multitude of them in each individual, occupying every part of the body. For instance:

Great joys attenuate the spirits; familiar cheerfulness strengthens the spirits by calling them forth.+

And again:

The spirits of the wine oppress the spirits animal.'

And in Shakespeare we find this same theory of the spirits. He says:

And again:

Fair daughter! you do draw my spirits from me,
With new lamenting ancient oversights.*

Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep.3

And again:

I am never merry when I hear sweet music.
The reason is, your spirits are attentive."

And again:

Your spirits shine through you."

Young gentleman, your spirits are too bold for your years."

My spirits, as in a dream, are all bound up."

My spirits are nimble.

Heaven give your spirits comfort.9

Summon up your dearest spirits.10

The nimble spirits in the arteries."1

Their great guilt,

Like poison given to work a great time after,

Now 'gins to bite the spirits.12

Spirits are not finely touched but to fine issues, 13

Thus in the Shakespeare Plays we find the reflection of one of Bacon's most peculiar philosophical beliefs.

IV. SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.

Bacon fell into another error in natural philosophy which reappears in the Plays. This was a belief, which continued down to our own times, in spontaneous generation; that is to say, that life could come out of non-life. We now realize that that marvelous and inexplicable thing we call life ascends by an unbroken pedigree, through all time, back to the central Source of Force in the universe, by whatever name we may call it. But Bacon believed that life could come out of conditions of inorganic matter. says:

He

Ibid., ii, 1.

Measure for Measure, iv, 2.

10 Love's Labor Lost, ii, 1. 11 Ibid., iv, 3.

12 Tempest, iii, 3.

13 Measure for Measure, 1, 1.

The first beginnings and rudiments or effects of life in animalculæ spring from putrefaction, as in the eggs of ants worms, mosses, frogs after rain, etc.'

Again he says.

The excrements of living creatures do not only breed insecta when they are exerned, but also while they are in the body.?

We find that the poet Shakespeare had thought much upon this same very unpoetical subject. He says:

And, as the sleeping soldiers in the alarm,

Your bedded hair, like life in excrements,
Starts up and stands on end.3

Bacon says:

For all putrefaction, if it dissolve not in arefaction, will in the end issue into plants, or living creatures bred of putrefaction.

And again he speaks of

Living creatures bred of putrefaction.3

And in Shakespeare we have Hamlet saying:

For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a god kissing carrion."

And in all this we see, also, the natural philosopher, who believed that "most base things tend to rich ends."

V. OTHER ERRORS.

Both believed that there was a precious stone in the head of a toad. Bacon says:

Query. If the stone taken out of a toad's head be not of the like virtue; for the toad loveth shade and coolness."

Shakespeare says:

Sweet are the uses of adversity;

Which, like the toad, ugly und venomous,

Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.

Both thought the liver was the seat of sensuality. Bacon in The Advancement of Learning, book ii, refers to Plato's opinion to that effect. And in Shakespeare we have:

This is the liver vein, which makes flesh a deity;
A green goose, a goddess."

Both believed, despite the discoveries of Galileo, that the earth was the center of the universe, and that the heavens revolved around it. Later in his life Bacon seemed to accept the new theories, but at the time the Plays were written he repudiated them.

He says:

Who would not smile at the astronomers, I mean not these new carmen which drive the earth about.1

Again he says:

It is a poor center of a man's actions, himself. It is right earth, for that only stands fast upon his own center; whereas all things that have affinity with the heavens move upon the center of another, which they benefit."

While Shakespeare also rejected the new theories. Hamlet:

Doubt thou the stars are fire,

Doubt that the sun doth move.3

Again he says:

He says in

The heavens themselves, the planets and this center,
Observe degree, priority and place.1

And in the same play he says:

But the strong base and building of my love

Is as the very center of the earth,

Drawing all things to it."

1 Essay In Praise of Knowledge, 1590

- Life and Works, vol. i, p. 124.

2 Essay Of Wisdom.

Hamlet, ii, 2.

Troilus and Cressida, i, 3.

$ Ibid., iv, 2.

I

CHAPTER VII.

THE IDENTICAL USE OF UNUSUAL WORDS.

Letter for letter! Why, this is the very same: the very hand: the very words.
Merry Wives of Windsor, ii, 1.

HAVE already shown, in the first chapter of Book I., the tendency manifested in the Plays to use unusual words, especially those derived from or constructed out of the Latin. I may add to the list already given the following instances:

And all things rare

That heaven's air in this huge rondure hems.'

Cowards and men cautelous.?

No soil or cautel.

Through all the world's vastidity.

Such exsufficate and blown surmises."

His pendant bed and procreant cradle.

Thou vinew'dst leaven."

Rend and deracinate.8

Thou cacadæmon.o

We have a very crowding of words, unusual in poetry, into the following lines:

As knots, by the conflux of meeting sap,
Infect the sound pine and divert his grain
Tortive and errant from his course of growth."

All these things bespeak the scholar, overflowing with Roman learning and eager to enrich his mother-tongue by the coinage of new words. It is not too much to say that Bacon has doubled the capacity of the English language. He was aware of this fact himself, and in his Discourse in Praise of Queen Elizabeth he says that the tongue of England "has been infinitely polished since her happy times."