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net, perhaps, may represent the true state of his mind and feeling, near the close of his life:

"Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,

Fool'd by these rebel powers that thee array,
Why dost thou pine within, and suffer dearth,
Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?
Why so large cost, having so short a lease,
Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?
Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,
Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body's end?
Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss,
And let that pine to aggravate thy store;
Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross:
Within be fed, without be rich no more,

So shalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men,
And death once dead, there's no more dying then."

Sonnet cxlvi.

§ 6. BACON a poet.

Of course, if this theory be established, there will be no further question that Francis Bacon was a poet; but the business here will be to consider of the extraneous evidences of the fact, and also of those further proofs out of the writings themselves, more immediately connected with this part of the inquiry, which go to establish that fact. We have already seen in his personal history that he was, in the earlier part of his career, much in the habit of writing sonnets. Some of them were addressed to the Queen, some were written for Essex to be addressed to her in his name, and one, at least, was commended by great persons; for, as he writes in the Apology concerning Essex, "a little before that time, being about the middle of Michaelmas term [1599], her majesty had a purpose to dine at my lodge at Twickenham Park, at which time I had, though I profess not to be a poet, prepared a sonnet, directly tending and alluding to draw on her majesty's reconcilement to my lord; which, I remember, also, I showed to a great person and one of my lord's nearest

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friends [Southampton ?], who commended it." In the letter of advice addressed by the Earl of Essex to Sir Fulke Greville on his studies, first printed by Mr. Speddling as written by Bacon, and palpably one of the numerous papers drafted by him for his patron's use, the Earl is made to say: "For poets, I can commend none, being resolved to be ever a stranger to them." " However this may have been intended to be seriously spoken in character by the Earl to the Knight (who was himself a poet), when considered with reference to the actual facts now known concerning them both, it may be taken as a pretty good joke. Nor need there be any wonder that his sonnets were commended by the great, when we know, by acknowledged specimens of his skill in the art, that he was capable of writing very excellent poetry. Upon a review of his poetical works, Mr. Spedding ventures to express the opinion, that "Bacon was not without the fine phrensy of the poet," and that, if it had taken the ordinary direction, "it would have carried him to a place among the great poets."

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His metrical versions of the Psalms of David, which were dedicated to his friend, the learned and pious poet, George Herbert, as "the best judge of Divinity and Poesy met," were the amusement of his idle hours, during a time of impaired health, in the spring of 1625, and within a year of his death. Certainly, nothing great, or very brilliant, should be looked for in these mere translations into verse. In idea and sentiment, he was absolutely limited to the original psalm: nor could he have much latitude in the expression; besides that large allowance must be made for the necessary difference between the young and "strong imagination" of

"The lunatic, the lover, and the poet,"

of the "Midsummer-Night's Dream" of the man of thirty1 Apology, Works (Phila.), II. 336.

2 Letters and Life, by Spedding, II. 25.

8 Works (Boston), XIV. 113.

three, and the more compounded age and the lassitude of the sick old man of sixty-five. Nevertheless, in elegance, ease of rhythmic flow, and pathetic sweetness, in many passages, they are not unworthy of the master himself, and in the expression and use of words, there are many similitudes with Shakespeare, and some striking parallel passages may be found in them: as, for instance, this one from the translation of the XCth Psalm,

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"As a tale told, which sometimes men attend,

And sometimes not, our life steals to an end :"

which may be compared with the following lines from the "King John":—

"Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale,

Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man." - Act III. Sc. 4.

And again, in the same Psalm, we have these lines:

"O Lord, thou art our home, to whom we fly,
And so hast always been from age to age:

Before the hills did intercept the eye,

Or that the frame was up of earthly stage,

One God thou wert, and art, and still shall be;

The line of Time, it doth not measure thee.

Both death and life obey thy holy lore,

And visit in their turns, as they are sent;

A thousand years with thee, they are no more

Than yesterday, which, ere it is, is spent:

Or as a watch by night, that course doth keep,

And goes, and comes, unwares to them that sleep." 1

And in the CIVth Psalm, we have this line:

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"The greater navies look like walking woods."

Now, compare this with the following lines from the "Macbeth" :

"Mess. I look'd toward Birnam, and anon, methought,

The wood began to move.....

Mac. To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

1 Works (Boston), XIV. 125.

Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing." Act V. Sc. 5.

It has scarcely ever been doubted, among critics, that the sonnets, smaller poems, and plays were the work of one and the same author; though many have experienced insurmountable difficulties in the attempt to reconcile the sonnets with the life of the man, William Shakespeare. The similitudes of thought, style, and diction, are such as to put at rest all question on that head. Mr. Boswell doubted whether any true intimations could be drawn from the Sonnets of Shakespeare, respecting the life and feelings of the author: certainly no such doubt could have arisen in his mind, if he had considered them as the work of Francis Bacon. In respect of ideas, opinions, modes of thinking and feeling, style, manner, and language, they bear the impress of Bacon's mind, especially in the first half of his life; and they exhibit states of mind and feeling, which will find an explanation nowhere better than in his personal history. Many of them show the strongest internal evidence of their having been addressed to the Queen, as they no doubt were. Bacon tells us, that "she was very willing to be courted, wooed, and to have sonnets made in her commendation"; 1 and, as we know, he was himself notoriously given to the writing of sonnets to this "mistress' eyebrow." Some of them may have been addressed to his young friend, Mr. William Herbert (Earl of Pembroke), and others may find a fitting interpretation in the circumstances and events of his own actual life, in his own inward thought and feeling, and in his own enterprises of love, which continued to a late day, though this Petrarch worshipped no particular Laura. The first small collection of sonnets and minor poems was published by Jaggard, in 1599, under the title of the "Passionate Pilgrim," but the full edition of the

1 In Mem. Eliz., Works (Mont.), III. 477.

Sonnets was dedicated to "Mr. W. H." in 1609, when Shakespeare was in his forty-sixth, and Bacon in the fortyninth year of his age. Even the difficulty of Mr. Boswell, however, that a man of forty-five should write such sonnets as the LXXIIId, may disappear, when it is considered that Bacon was married in his forty-sixth year, and that even in 1609, when so nearly fifty, thoughts of love and "yellow leaves" may very well have come together.

In 1594, the Solicitor's place having become vacant, Bacon's suit for it was urgently pressed by Essex and others of his friends. Without preferment at the age of thirtythree, and still hesitating, whether he should not devote himself wholly to studies and a private life, he felt this to be an important crisis in his fortunes; nearly all his hopes looking to a public career were staked upon it. The Queen had been personally well-disposed towards him, but she had conceived a high displeasure at his course in Parliament on the subsidies, and he was now excluded from her presence; and the zeal of Essex in his behalf, insisting upon it as a special favor to himself, and as perhaps affording some countenance to his party, seems still further to have marred the whole business. She was determined not to yield her own will to the pride of Essex, and hesitated, perhaps, to raise to so high a place in the state the known adherent and friend of the great earl, who, although the grandson of her cousin, and a favorite thus far, was yet a descendant in the line of Edward III., whose ambitious head was capable of projects looking to her very throne. So, at last, when he had been "voiced with great expectation," and had had "the honorable testimony of so many counsellors," and "the wishes of most men" even for the higher place of AttorneyGeneral, the Queen "did fly the tilt," says Essex, and it was fixed, that Serjeant Fleming should be made Solicitor; and, as we learn from himself, "no man ever read a more exquisite disgrace" than Francis Bacon. No longer "able to endure the sun," he "fled into the shade" at Twicken

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