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being perhaps a part of those "particular exchanges" to which he had hitherto been given, had been and would continue to be "the recreations of his other studies; " but they must now give way to the more important philosophical labors and those "banks and mounts of perpetuity which will not break"; for on these he was henceforth to be more exclusively employed; "though I am not ignorant," says he, "that those kind of writings would with less pains and embracement (perhaps) yield more lustre and reputation to my name than those other which I have in hand."1

Nor is there anything remarkable in the circumstance that a barrister of the Inns of Court should be a poet and write for the stage. John Ford of Gray's Inn, and Francis Beaumont of the Inner Temple, were both lawyers and eminent dramatic writers; the Christmas Revels at these Inns were celebrated with masques, triumphs, and stageplays; plays were written by eminent scholars and divines to be performed on festive occasions, even at the Universities; Thomas Sackville Lord Buckhurst, and Foulke Greville Lord Brooke, were poets, and wrote plays; Sir Henry Wotton, sometime secretary of the Earl of Essex, also wrote plays; William, Earl of Pembroke, like the celebrated Sir Philip Sidney, was a cultivator of the art of poetry; Dr. John Donne, a great philosopher and divine, as well as George Herbert, the "best judge of divinity and poesy met," and Sir John Davies, a distinguished lawyer and judge, are named as founders of the metaphysical school of poetry of that day; and that great scholar and writer, John Selden of the Inner Temple, though not himself a poet, was such a critic, philosopher, and man, as to command the esteem and confidence of Lord Bacon, who named him in his will as one eminently fit to sit in judgment upon his unpublished manuscripts. Nor is it to be supposed that he contemplated in the writing of these poet1 Works (Boston), XIII. 188.

2. Craik's Hist. of Eng. Lit. I. 578.

ical works merely "some lease of quick revenue," or any immediate advantage to himself, or personal fame, as many of the poets did, in those days. On the contrary, we may safely imagine for him the highest and most disinterested purpose which it is possible to conceive for any author, even for himself, who was seeking by the labors of a life to reform and advance the learning, science, philosophy, arts, morals, and the whole "practic part" of human life in this world; in which the personal interests of the writer, and even the lustre of fame and reputation, were with himself, perhaps, the least important considerations, when these "trifles" were in question.

§ 2. CIRCUMSTANCES.

Francis Bacon was endowed by nature with the richest gifts and most extraordinary powers. His mother was a learned woman in those days when learning for either sex implied a knowledge of the Greek and Latin classics; and we find her translating works of deep theology, after the example of Lady Jane Grey, who, according to Ascham, read "the Phædon Platonis in Greeke" with as much delight as if it had been "one of the tales of Boccase," or of the Queen herself, who is said to have translated Boethius "De Consolatione Philosophia" into her own English. This Boethius, it will be remembered, was a Christian philosopher and poet of the fifth century,1 and a writer that exhibited the highest order of Platonic genius and intellect, both in style and matter surpassing Cicero himself; and in the age of Elizabeth there were not a few scholars and divines, who, like Richard Hooker, George Herbert, John Selden, Dr. Donne, Bishop Andrews, and Lord Bacon himself, were by no means afraid of the philosophy of Plato. His father was not only Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, but an eminent scholar and a patron of learning and art, who had the reputation of uniting in him1 Opera Boethii (Class. Delph. Valpy), London, 1823.

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self "the opposite characters of a witty and a weighty speaker," and was, says Sir Robert Naunton, an archpeece of wit and of wisdome," and "abundantly facetious; which tooke much with the queene." His palace of York House, in which this son was born, and his country-seat of Gorhambury, was well furnished with libraries, and adorned with works of art and whatever might please the taste of the scholar and gentleman. His father breeds him as the King did Leonatus in the play,

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"Puts to him all the learnings that his time
Could make him receiver of; which he took,
As we do air, fast as 't was minister'd; and
In his spring became a harvest; liv'd in Court
(Which rare it is to do) most prais'd, most lov'd;
A sample to the youngest, to th' more mature,
A glass that feated them; and to the graver,

A child that guided dotards." — Cymbeline, Act I. Sc. 1.

We can easily imagine what must have been the early education of this notable youth, whom the Queen called her young Lord Keeper at ten, and whose "first and childish years," says Dr. Rawley, "were not without some mark of eminency: at which time, he was endued with that pregnancy and towardness of wit, as they were passages of that deep and universal apprehension which was manifest in him afterwards." We need not be surprised to find him entering the University of Cambridge, at a little more than twelve, discovering the deficiencies of Aristotle and outstripping his tutors before he was sixteen, going as an attaché to the Court of Paris, learning French, Italian, and Spanish, travelling with the French Court, and being intrusted with a mission to the Queen, before he was nineteen; an utter barrister at twenty-one, a member of Parliament at twenty-four, a Bencher at twenty-five, and doubtless a maturer man at twenty, in all learning and wisdom, than most graduates of the universities were at full thirty 1 Biogr. Britannica, I. 446.

2 Memoirs of Eliz., 75, London, 1824.

Upon the death of his father, sitting down thus furnished, at Gray's Inn, in 1579, to the study of the law, a further survey of the Greek and Latin poets, and a thorough study of the philosophic wisdom and culture of the ancients, reviewing the patent deficiencies of his own age in matters civil, moral, and religious, in sciences, philosophy, and art, with the recollection about him, perhaps, of the plays that had been written and performed within the walls of the University while he was there, and with such example before him as that of Sir Philip Sidney, and such encouragement for the cultivation of the art of poetry as was to be found in his writings as being not unworthy of the highest dignity, rank, ambition, or genius of any man, and with that boldness of self-conscious power that did not fear to grapple with Aristotle and Plato, nor even to undertake the renovation of all philosophy, it is not so very wonderful that he should also come to the conclusion that "true art is always capable of advancing," and should even begin to spread his own wings in the sphere of Apollo. The "Venus and Adonis" at once gets to the very essence and bottom of the pastoral Arcadia, and the "Rape of Lucrece" measures the height of the Roman virtue and dignity. Ancient lore furnishes material and story for a "Titus Andronicus," or a "Pericles," in near imitation of the manner of the Greek tragedy, which he may send to the theatre, perhaps. The "Histoires Tragiques" of Belleforest, and the Italian novels of Cinthio, Bandello, Boccaccio, and the rest, which he has read in Paris, furnish hints of fable and incident for a few delightful and entertaining comedies of love, wit, and humor, which yet savor of the classic lore of the University, and bear traces of his Parisian French and his accomplishments in Italian and Spanish. The splendid entertainments at Court set the young imagination all in a blaze, and produce that extraordinary exhibition of love, wit, and fancy, the "Midsummer Night's Dream," in honor 1 Scala Intellectus, Works (Mont.), XIV. 426-7.

of the maiden Queen. The Christmas Revels at Gray's Inn call for a new "Comedy of Errors" out of Plautus, with sundry sharp hits at the gowned and wigged gentry there assembled, which may go to the theatre also, now that its special work is done. The English Histories of Holinshed, Hall, Stow, Speed, and the rest, all compact with learning, imagination, and poetry, of which he has made some study, as well as Chaucer, the old ballads, and all the old plays, tales, proverbs, and chronicles, which he has found time to ransack, may furnish fable, story, moral precept, and tragic incident enough for a few dramatic histories in the new kind, of which some first specimens and youthful sketches, which will eventually grow into larger dimensions and more perfect form, may be thrown upon the stage at once, until they begin to attract the public attention, and find their way into the hands of the printers, without the author's name, as they were lately acted by the Lord Chamberlain's or the Earl of Pembroke's servants. All this will be done in secret, or with the knowledge of a few friends only who can keep a secret; for he well knows that the public opinion is much against poets and writers for the stage, and that to be known as a poet and a playwright would be next to ruin to all his prospects for advancement in the state, and in a profession in which the greatest lights were of opinion, with Lord Coke, that poetasters and play-writers were to be ranked with "alchemysts, monopotexts, concealers, and informers," whose "fatal end was beggary," being no better than "fit subjects for the grand jury as vagrants." He had not made up his mind yet to become a sorry book-maker," nor quite to retire to Cambridge with a couple of men, there to devote his life to contemplations and studies," without looking back." In the mean time, he is pushing his interest at Court, with the tardy support of his uncle, Lord Burghley, and the jealousy of the Cecils; for he has chosen to follow a public, rather than a merely professional or literary career.

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