And such a twain can do 't, in which I bind Cleo. Excellent falsehood! Why did he marry Fulvia, and not love her?". Act 1. Sc. 1. Nor would Cleopatra stay in this world, Antony being in the other: "Cleo. O Antony! Nay, I will take thee too. What should I stay [Applying another asp. [Dies. Char. In this wide world? - So fare thee well. 1 Now, boast thee, death! in thy possession lies A lass unparallel'd."— Act V. Sc. 2. This author's breadth of view, his greatness of soul, his lofty standards of moral judgment, and his deep insight into the confusions of men and things, whereby the most precious jewels are discovered where least looked for, even in the toad's head, and purified and redeemed from the rubbish of affairs, life, and opinion, which had long concealed them from the sight of most men, this brave instruction, this nobleness in record, and these unparalleled mortals, all together, reveal to our apprehension a genius and a soul which readily suggests but few living parallels. For style and diction, depth and breadth, and all-sided clearness of vision, the "Cymbeline" and the "Troilus and Cressida" may compare with the best of the moderns. The open secret is therein laid more open; but the world will not see it, howsoever open: they will rather stay under the clouds, and mope still in theological fog, believing only "The scriptures of the loyal Leonatus, Stands in worse case of woe." — Act 111. Sc. 4. 1 Mr. White reads "in this wild world," after the Folio of 1623, which reads "wilde world"; a misprint, as I believe, for wide world, the true reading. See White's Shakes., XII. 128; Notes, 147. 1 Bacon would have the true interpreter of nature pry more deeply into this open secret, and write a new Scripture: "We desire," he says, "this primary history to be conscientiously collected, and as if upon solemn oath of its verity in every particular; since it is the volume of God's works, and (so far as a similitude between the majesty of divine things and the lowness of the terrene, may be allowed), as it were another Scripture ";1 for, as he continues again, "this writing of our Sylva Sylvarum is, to speak properly, not a natural history, but a high kind of natural magic"; and according to Dr. Rawley, it was "a usual speech of his lordship," that it was to be "the world as God made it"; that is, not a work of the imaginations of men, but the work of the divine mind; and such being the nature of it, we need not wonder that he should call it a high kind of natural magic and an actual Holy Scripture. So he says that Homer "was made a kind of Scripture by the latter schools of the Grecians"; and his fables "seemed to be like a thin rarefied air, which, from the traditions of more ancient nations, fell into the flutes of the Grecians"; as the celestial spirits, in "The Tempest," "melted into air, into thin air." According to Goethe, out of the three reverences, reverence for what is above us, reverence for what is around us, and reverence for what is under us, springs the highest reverence, the reverence for one's self and that true religion, wherein a man is "justified in reckoning himself the best that God and Nature have produced," as in the play : "though mean and mighty, rotting Together, have one dust, yet reverence (That angel of the world) doth make distinction Of place 'tween high and low.". Cymb., Act IV. Sc. 2. And again : "The crown will find an heir. Great Alexander Was like to be the best.". Winter's Tale, Act V. Sc. 1. 1 Parasceve, Works (Boston), II. 57. "Those that I reverence, those I fear, the wise: -- At fools I laugh, not fear them.". Cymb., Act IV. Sc. 2. So, we may remember, Bacon says, that "the reverence of a man's self is, next religion, the chiefest bridle of all vices," and that, "whosoever is unchaste cannot reverence himself"; and we find the same sentiment nearly repeated in idea (though not in words), and enforced with all the powers of rhetoric, and in a splendid amplitude of metaphorical expression, all drawn from the common language of the Christian religion, in this fine passage from the "Troilus and Cressida :". "Tro. This she? no; this is Diomed's Cressida. If beauty have a soul, this is not she: If souls guide vows, if vows be sanctimony, If sanctimony be the gods' delight, If there be rule in unity itself, This is not she. O madness of discourse, The bonds of Heaven are slipp'd, dissolv'd, and loos'd; And with another knot, five-finger tied, The fractions of her faith, orts of her love, The fragments, scraps, the bits, and greasy reliques Bacon comprehended "the the world," as he expresses it. Tro. and Cr., Act V. Sc. 2. nature of this great city of So Carlyle says of Shake speare, that "in his mind the world is a whole; he figures it as Providence governs it; · ... • a world of earnest ness and sport, of solemn cliff and gay plain"; or as Bacon also says, again, comparing poetry with history as a mode of representing acts, or events, "poesy feigns them more just in retribution and more according to revealed providence." And what Schlegel said of Shakespeare may be said as well,-nay, rather better, of Bacon himself, that he had "deeply reflected on character and passion, on the progress of events and human destinies, on the human constitution, on all the things and relations of the world"; and again, that "the world of spirits and nature have laid all their treasures at his feet; in strength a demi-god, in profundity of view a prophet, in all-seeing wisdom a protecting spirit of the higher order, he lowers himself to mortals as if unconscious of his superiority, and is as open and unassuming as a child." But of most men, who will not, or who cannot, "so by degrees learn to read in the volumes" of God's universe, "I' the world's volume Our Britain seems as of it, but not in it; In a great pool, a swan's nest ";-Cymb., Act III. Sc. 4. for they will continue to believe with the fool, Thersites, that it is, in God and Nature as in Cressida, "A juggling trick,- to be secretly open." They will 66 Tro. and Cr., Act V. Sc. 4. "rather think this not Cressid "; and so thinking, they will proceed to create for themselves an ideal Cressid, after such pattern as they have; for they have ever left the oracles of God's works, and adored the deceiving and deformed imagery, which the unequal mirrours of their own minds have represented unto them." But having so created the human ideal idol, they must find, sooner or later, that "this is, and is not, Cressid." And hence, losing sight of all just reverences, the highest 1 Lectures on Dram. Lit., by A. W. Schlegel, p. 290–298 (Philad., 1833). wisdom, the true religion, and all just conception of the due line of order and authentic place of things in this universe, there reigns in the minds of men, for the most part, a confusion of ideas and opinions, and a moral disorder, which is not merely a "musical confusion Of hounds and echo in conjunction," but an appalling chaos, equal to that of Agamemnon's Grecian camp: 66 'Degree being vizarded, Th' unworthiest shews as fairly in the mask. The heavens themselves, the planets and this centre, Observe degree, priority, and place, Insisture, course, proportion, season, form, Office, and custom, in all line of order: And posts, like the commandment of a king, Sans check, to good and bad. But when the planets, In evil mixture, to disorder wander, What plagues, and what portents! what mutiny! What raging of the sea, shaking of the earth, The unity and married calm of states Quite from their fixture! O, when degree is shak'd, The enterprise is sick. How could communities, And, hark, what discord follows! each thing meets And the rude son should strike his father dead: |