Touchstone.-No, truly, unless thou wert hard favoured: for honesty coupled to beauty is to have honey as a sauce to sugar.

(As You Like It III. iii. 29).

Who, when he lived, his health and beauty set

Gloss on the rose, smell to the violet.

(V. A. 935).

The Promus note 687 presents the same sort of contrast as that which is twice pictured in Shakespeare :

O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright.
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night,
Like a rich jewel in an Æthiop's ear.

(Rom. Ful. I. v. 42).

Save that my soul's imaginary sight
Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,
Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,
Makes black night beauteous, and her old face new.

(Son. 27).

In all these cases, as in the three successive Promus notes, Bacon and the Poet had the same intention of bringing into comparison or contrast, the sublime or serious on the one hand, with the ridiculous or trivial on the other what is beautiful and natural with what is grotesque, fantastic and artificial.

See this point further discussed in "Bacon Journal" I. 70-72.

27. The following passage from a letter written by Bacon to Sir Tobie Mathew, Feb. 28, 1621, soon after his fall, has singular affinities with passages in Shakespeare :

"In this solitude of friends, which is the base-court of adversity, where almost nobody will be seen stirring, I have often remembered a saying of my Lord Ambassador of Spain, Amor san fin, no tienne fin '-(Love without end has no end). ("Life" VII. 335)

The base-court recalls the lines in Richard II. Northumberland speaks :

My Lord, in the base court he doth attend

BASE COURT. COURT HOLY WATER.

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To speak with you; may't please you to come down? King Rich.-Down? down I come; like glistering Phaethon ; Wanting the manage of unruly jades.

In the base court? Base court, where kings grow base,
To come at traitors' calls and do them grace.

In the base court? Come down? Down court ! down King!
For night-owls shriek where mounting larks should sing,
(Rich. II. III. iii. 176).

The ambassador's proverb, and the mode of quoting it— "I have often remembered," is echoed in Cymbeline :

I know not why

I love this youth; and I have heard you say,
Love's reason's without reason.

(Cymb. IV. ii. 20).

This is evidently a variation on the Spanish proverb. The meaning of the proverb is very elastic, and one of the interpretations that may be put upon the phrase, Love without End, is Love without thought of self, or reason. Bacon's nimble mind could easily make the transition.

28. In 1592, Bacon wrote of Lord Burleigh, "He was no brewer of holy water in Court, no dallier, no abuser, but ever real and certain." ("Life" I. 200). And writing to Lord Burleigh's son, Salisbury, in 1607, he says, “Your Lordship is no dealer of holy water, but noble and real.” (Ib. III. 297).

The same very curious phrase occurs in Lear. The Fool says to the outcast King, "O, nuncle, court holy water in a dry house is better than rain out o' door." (Lear III. ii. 10). The Clarendon note on this passage informs us that the phrase, Court holy water, is of French originEau benite de Cour. It means the fair, complimentary, ceremonious phraseology of a Court-fair words, easily spoken, easily believed, easily disbelieved.

29. In the following passage from Shakespeare, the full meaning is not contained in the words as they standthat must be obtained from a corresponding passage in Bacon. In the play of Richard II., Bolingbroke enters the

lists at Coventry, and gives courteous salutation to the King and his lords, and last of all to his father, Gaunt, whom he thus accosts:

Lo, as at English feasts, so I regreet

The daintiest last, to make the end most sweet.

(Rich. II. I. iii. 67).

The custom of bringing sweetmeats on the table as the last course of a feast is doubtless alluded to. But why should this be spoken of as a specially English custom? Has the speaker in his mind any country where a different practise prevails? What country? and what other ending is observed for feasts in this country? The text supplies no answer to these questions: but a speech of Bacon's does. In it he is reported to have addressed the House of Commons in these words: "Let not this Parliament end like a Dutch feast in salt meats, but like an English feast in sweet neats." ("Life" III. 215). Here, then, the missing terms of the comparison are supplied,-Dutch feasts,-salted meats. And we see that if the poet had given full expression to all that was in his mind, he might have added another line to Bolingbroke's salutation. Thus :

Lo, as at English feasts, I here regreet

The daintiest last, to make the end most sweet,
[Not like Dutch feasts, that end with salted meat.]

30. Bacon's willing service finds a singular mode of expressing itself in the following passage from a letter to Villiers, Nov. 29th, 1616

"Your Lordship may assure yourself, in whatsoever you commit to me, your Lordship's further care shall be needless. For I desire to take nothing from my Master and my friend, but care; and therein, I am so covetous as I will leave them as little as may be." ("Life” VI. 115). Henry V. expresses his special form of covetousness in the

same manner :

By Jove! I am not covetous for gold,

SLANDER. GARRULITY.

Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not, if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires;
But if it be a sin to covet honour,

I am the most offending soul alive.

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(Hen. V. IV. iii. 24).

31. When Bacon writes to Villiers, (1615), "Fame hath swift wings, specially that which hath black feathers,' ("Life" V. 248), we know he is speaking of injurious or slanderous reports. But his entire meaning is better understood if we refer to Sonnet 70.

That thou art blamed, shall not be thy defect,
For slander's mark was ever yet the fair ;
The ornament of beauty is suspect,

A crow that flies in heaven's sweetest air.

So, then, the bird of swift wing and black feathers is the crow, the black colour means suspicion or slander. The entire idea, thus metaphorically expressed, and divided between the two utterances, is an organic whole; the metaphor and the moral were conceived together and are the offspring of the same parent. Bacon is interpreted by Shakespeare.

32. Bacon makes a somewhat scornful reference to men holding high office who cling to their post after their powers are decayed. "Nay, retire, men cannot when they would; neither will they when it were reason; but are impatient of privateness, even in age and sickness, which require the shadow; like old townsmen that will be still sitting at their street door, though thereby they offer age to scorn." (Essay of "Great Place.").

Shakespeare was very fond of drawing the same picture. It is most exactly reproduced in the following:

Like an old tale still, which will have matter to rehearse, though credit be asleep, and not an ear open.

(W. Tale V. ii. 67).

Remembering these, we can better understand the familiar outlines of the following picture :

S

This act is as an ancient tale new told,
And in the last repeating troublesome,
Being urged at a time unseasonable.
In this the antique and well-noted face
Of plain old form is much disfigured.

(John IV. ii. 18).

The same picture is given in another setting :

So should my papers, yellow'd with their age,
Be scorned, like old men of less truth than tongue;
And your true rights be term'd a poet's rage,
And stretchéd metre of an antique song.

(Son. 17).

Her song was tedious, and outwore the night,
For lovers' hours are long, though seeming short;
If pleased themselves, others, they think, delight
In such-like circumstance, with such-like sport.

Their copious stories, oftentimes begun,
End without audience, and are never done.

(Ven. A. 841).

33. The fancy that the two eyes may wear different expressions, or be differently employed, is common to Bacon and Shakespeare. It is most familiar in the King's description of himself, mourning for his deceased brother, yet glad to wear his crown and wed his queen :—

As 'twere with a defeated joy,

With an auspicious and a dropping eye,

With mirth in funeral, and with dirge in marriage.

(Ham. I. ii. II).

The same double sight is assumed in Winter's Tale :

But, O, the noble combat that, 'twixt joy and sorrow, was fought in Paulina! She had one eye declined for the loss of her husband; another elevated that the oracle was fulfilled. (Winter's Tale V. ii. 80).

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Bacon also describes Perkin Warbeck,-" beginning to squint one eye upon the crown, and another upon the sanctuary. (Works VI. 192). And in the account of Squire's conspiracy, we find,-"Walpoole carrying a waking and a waiting eye." ("Life" II. III).