William T. Smedley

“ The most sanguine Baconian, in his most enthusiastic moments, must fail adequately to appreciate the achievements of Francis Bacon and the obligations under which he has placed posterity. But Bacon knew—and he alone knew—their full value. It was fitting that the greatest poet which the world had produced should in matchless verse do honour to the world's greatest intellect. It was a pretty conceit. Only a master mind would dare to make the attempt. ”

“ But the age, the spirit of the nation—in a word, all those forces of which the genius of an individual man is composed, and which, moreover, genius is least able to resist—had here placed an obstacle, impenetrable both to the poet and the philosopher. Shakspeare was no more able to exhibit Greek characters than Bacon to expound Greek poetry. Like Bacon, Shakspeare had in his turn of mind something that was Roman, and not at all akin to the Greek. ”

“ Who is there that hearing the name of Bacon does not instantly recognise everything of genius the most profound, of literature the most extensive, of discovery the most penetrating, of observation of human life the most distinguished and refined. ”

“ In Bacon's works we find a multitude of moral sayings and maxims of experience, from which the most striking mottoes might be drawn for every Shakespearian play, aye, for every one of his principal characters (we have already brought forward not a few proofs of this) , testifying to a remarkable harmony in their mutual comprehension of human nature. Both, in their systems of morality rendering homage to Aristotle, whose ethics Shakespeare, from a passage in Troilus, may have read, arrived at the same end as he did—that virtue lies in a just medium between two extremes. ”

“ Shakespeare would also have agreed with him in this, that Bacon declared excess to be 'the fault of youth, as defect is of age;' he accounted 'defect the worst, because excess contains some sparks of magnanimity, and, like a bird, claims kindred of the heavens, while defect, only like a base worm, crawls upon the earth.' In these maxims lie at once, as it were, the whole theory of Shakespeare's dramatic forms and of his moral philosophy. ”

“ And, in a word, it seemed that Nature had exempted from the ordinary frailities of men him whom she had marked out to deal with their crimes. All these good qualities made him the darling of the people and prized by the great ones of the State. But when it seemed that nothing could destroy his position, Fortune made clear that she did not yet wish to abandon her character for instability, and that Bacon had too much worth to remain so long prosperous. ”

“ Never, perhaps, was there so comprehensive a talent for the delineation of character as Shakespeare's. It not only grasps the diversities of rank, sex, and age, down to the dawnings of infancy; not only do the king and the beggar, the hero and the pickpocket, the sage and the idiot speak and act with equal truth ”

“ The writer here states definitely that he is dominated by the sin of self-love; it possesseth his eye, his soul, and every part of him. There can be found no remedy for it; it is so grounded in his heart. No face is so gracious as is his, no shape so true, no truth of such account. He defines his worth as surmounting that of all others. This is the frank expression of a man who not only believed that he was, but knew that he was superior to all his contemporaries, not only in intellectual power, but in personal appearance. ”

“ Bacon's work can never be understood by anyone who has not realised the marvellous character of the mind of the boy, his phenomenal industry, and the fact that "he could imagine like a poet and execute like a clerk of the works." ”

“ Whereas of the sciences which regard nature the Holy Philosopher declares that 'it is the glory of God to conceal a thing, but it is the glory of the King to find it out.' Even as though the Divine Nature took pleasure in the innocent and kindly sport of children playing at hide and seek, and vouched-safe of his kindness and goodness to admit the human spirit for his play fellow in that game. ”

“ Where the creative imagination never ceases to be simple and naïve, where it never distorts itself by the affected or the unnatural, there is the consecrated land of poetry, in which there is no place for the parodist. On the other hand, where there is a palpable want of simplicity and nature, parody is perfectly conceivable ”

“ To parody Homer [Pg 167] is to mistake him, and to stand so far beyond his scope that the truth and magic of his poetry can no longer be felt; and this is the position of Shakespeare and Bacon. The imagination of Homer, and all that could be contemplated and felt by that imagination, namely, the classical antiquity of the Greeks, are to them utterly foreign. We cannot understand Aristotle without Plato; nay, I maintain that we cannot contemplate with a sympathetic mind the Platonic world of ideas, if we have not previously sympathised with the world of the Homeric gods. ”

“ It is very easy, with little information as to Bacon's actions and little knowledge of the period, to form a definite opinion as to the relations of Bacon and Burghley. The more information as to the one and knowledge of the other one gets, the more difficult does it become to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion. Here was the son of Elizabeth's great Lord Keeper, the nephew of her trusted minister, himself from his boyhood a persona grata with the Queen, of brilliant parts and great wisdom—if he had been a mere place-hunter his desires could have been satisfied over and over again. ”

“ He could appropriate to himself a Coriolanus and a Brutus, a Cæsar and an Antony; he could succeed with the Roman heroes of Plutarch, but not with the Greek heroes of Homer. The latter he could only parody, but his parody was as infelicitous as Bacon's explanation of the "Wisdom of the Ancients." Those must be dazzled critics indeed who can persuade themselves that the heroes of the Iliad are excelled by the caricatures in "Troilus and Cressida." The success of such a parody was poetically impossible; indeed, he that attempts to parody Homer shows thereby that he has not understood him. ”

“ Amongst which, if my affection to learning doe not transport me, there is none more worthy, or more noble, than the endowment of the world with sound and fruitfull Advancement of Learning: For why should we erect unto ourselves some few authors, to stand like Hercules Columnes beyond which there should be no discovery of knowledge, seeing we have your Majesty as a bright and benigne starre to conduct and prosper us in this Navigation. ”

“ Realising the defects and possibilities of their language, they recognised that by appropriations from the Greek and Latin languages, and from the melodious forms of the Italian poetry, they might reform its defects and develop its possibilities so completely that they could place at the service of great writers a vehicle for expression which would be the peer if not the superior of any language, classical or modern. It was a bold project for young men, some of whom were not out of their teens, to venture on. That they met with great success is beyond question ”

“ Both in philosophy and poetry everything conspired, as it were, throughout this prosperous period, in favour of two great minds, Shakespeare and Bacon; all competitors vanished from their side, and they could give forth laws for art and science which it is incumbent even upon present ages to fulfil. As the revived philosophy, which in the former century in Germany was divided among many, but in England at that time was the possession of a single man, so poetry also found one exclusive heir, compared with whom those later born could claim but little. ”

“ Pope wrote: "Lord Bacon was the greatest genius that England, or perhaps any other country, ever produced." If an examination, more thorough than has hitherto been made, of the records and literature of his age establishes beyond doubt the truth of the suggestions which have now been put forward, what more can be said? This at any rate, that to him shall be given that title to which he aspired and for which he was willing to renounce his own name. He shall be called "The Benefactor of Mankind." ”

“ Shakespeare would, perhaps, have looked down just as contemptuously on the ancients and their arts as Bacon did on their philosophy and natural science, and both on the same grounds; they boasted of the greater age of the world, of more enlarged knowledge of heaven, earth, and mankind. Neither stooped before authorities, and an injustice similar to that which Bacon committed against Aristotle, Shakespeare perhaps has done to Homer. ”

“ Now what conclusions may be drawn from the foregoing extracts? Bacon attached the greatest importance to the consideration of the internal life of man. He affirms that dramaticall or representative poesy, which brings the world upon the stage, is of excellent use if it be not abused. The discipline of the stage was neglected in his time, but the care of the ancients was that it should instruct the minds of men unto virtue, and wise men and great philosophers accounted it as the musical bow of the mind. ”

“ Bacon was entirely exempt from censure, nevertheless he was declared guilty of the crime of his servant and was deprived of the power that he had so long exercised with so much honour and glory. In this I see the working of monstrous ingratitude and unparalleled cruelty—to say that a man who could mark the years of his life rather by the signal services that he had rendered to the State than by times or seasons, should have received such hard usage for the punishment of a crime which he never committed ”

“ After he had shown these young men the first grounds of true wisdom, and of all necessary things for their salvation, he brought into his house a tutor of great learning and well reported of his good life and conversation, to whom he committed their instruction. After teaching them the Latin tongue and some smattering of Greek he propounded for their chief studies the moral philosophy of ancient sages and wise men, together with the understanding and searching out of histories which are the light of life. ”

“ In the scholastic science of the middle ages, as in the chivalric poetry of the romantic period, approbation and not truth was sought for, and with one accord Shakespeare's poetry and Bacon's science were equally opposed to this. As Shakespeare balanced the one-sided errors of the imagination by reason, reality, and nature, so Bacon led philosophy away from the one-sided errors of reason to experience ”

“ It may be presumed that Shakespeare liked Bacon but little, if he knew his writings and life; that he liked not his ostentation, which, without on the whole interfering with his modesty, recurred too often in many instances; that he liked not the fault-finding which his ill-health might have caused, nor the narrow-mindedness with which he pronounced the histrionic art to be infamous, although he allowed that the ancients regarded the drama as a school for virtue ”

“ Hallam has said of Bacon: "If we compare what may be found in the sixth, seventh, and eighth books of the 'De Augmentis,' and the various short treatises contained in his works on moral and political wisdom and on human nature, with the rhetoric, ethics, and politics of Aristotle, or with the historians most celebrated for their deep insight into civil society and human character—with Thucydides, Tacitus, Phillipe de Comines, Machiavel, David Hume—we shall, I think, find that one man may almost be compared with all of these together." ”

“ Just as Bacon, although he declared knowledge in itself to be much more valuable than the use of invention, insisted throughout generally and dispassionately upon the practical use of philosophy, so Shakespeare's poetry, independent as was his sense of art, aimed throughout at bearing upon the moral life. ”

“ The value of the Shakespeare Folio 1623 will be enhanced. It will stand alone as the greatest monument of the achievements of the human intellect.
To any literary critic who should honour this book by noticing it, it is probable the foregoing statements may seem extravagant and untrustworthy. To such the request is now made that before making any comment he will inspect the proof of the foregoing statements which are in the writer's possession. The dramas of Shakespeare are, by universal consent, placed at the head of all literature. ”

“ This is the common experience of a man as he advances in life. So long as he does not see his reflection in a glass, if he tries to visualize himself, he sees the youth or young man. Only in his most pessimistic moments does he realise his age.
There is no longer any difficulty in understanding Shakespeare's Sonnets. They were addressed by "Shakespeare," the poet, to the marvellous youth who was known under the name of Francis Bacon, and they were written, with Hilliard's portrait placed on his table before him. ”

“ From Chapter CIII. it is clear that Bacon contemplated that eventually all the experiments of all the arts, collected and digested, should be brought within one man's knowledge and judgment. This man, having a supreme view of the whole range of subjects, would transfer experiments of one art to another and so lead "to the discovery of many new things of service to the life and state of man." ”

“ That is all that can be said about his career at Cambridge except that Rawley adds:
"Whilst he was commorant in the University, about sixteen years of age (as his lordship hath been pleased to impart unto myself) , he first fell into the dislike of the philosophy of Aristotle; not for the worthlessness of the author, to whom he would ever ascribe all high attributes, but for the unfruitfulness of the way; being a philosophy (as his lordship used to say) only strong for disputations and contentions, but barren of the production of works for the benefit of the life of man ”

“ Vanity, avarice, and ambition, vices that too often attach themselves to great honours, were to him quite unknown, and if he did a good action it was not from the desire of fame, but simply because he could not do otherwise. His good qualities were entirely pure, without being clouded by the admixture of any imperfections, and the passions that form usually the defects in great men in him only served to bring out his virtues ”

“ Poesy, in that sense we have expounded it, is likewise of Individuals, fancied to the similitude of those things which in true History are recorded, yet so as often it exceeds measure; and those things which in Nature would never meet, nor come to passe, Poesy composeth and introduceth at pleasure, even as Painting doth: which indeed is the work of the Imagination. ”

“ Resolve, no Man is wise or safe, but he that is honest: And let this Persuasion turn your studies and observations from the Complement and Impostures of the debased age, to more real grounds of wisdom, gathered out of the story of Times past, and out of the government of the present state. ”