NOT A VOLUMINOUS AUTHOR.

39

and fragmentary anticipations of the Novum Organon which appeared in 1605, 1606, 1607, 1608, 1612 and 1616; and the "Essays" and "De Sapientia Veterum" and some smaller works appeared before 1609.

But there is absolutely nothing that accounts for his private studies and literary pursuits during the first forty years of his life. When we proceed to make an estimate of the entire literary output of Bacon, as a scientific and philosophical writer, the amount is really somewhat small. His Life and Works, edited by Spedding and Ellis, occupy 14 8vo. volumes. But the prefaces, notes, editorial comments, translations from the Latin, and biographical narrative occupy more than half of the seven volumes of Biography. And a large space in all the fourteen volumes is devoted to business letters, speeches, State papers, evidences of witnesses or culprits in State trials, and such like documents, besides memoranda relating to private matters of no literary significance whatever, so that out of the 1,480 pages which are put down to Bacon's credit in the seven volumes devoted to the Life, only about 375 pages can be ranked as literature, and these seven volumes themselves contain 3,000 pages. If we calculate the

whole amount contained in the fourteen volumes we shall find it may be reckoned at about six such volumes, each containing 520 pages. And this includes the legal writings and speeches. Bacon was 66 years old when he died. Such genius as his ripens early. When he was 20 he was a ripe scholar, and capable of literary production. And all we can find for his whole life amounts to about 70 pages per annum, less than 6 pages a month. Also, if the Shakespeare poetry was the only work of William Shakspere, certainly he was not a voluminous writer. Thirty-one years may be taken as a moderate estimate of the duration of his literary life, i.e., from 1585 till his death in 1616. And the result is, 37 plays and the minor poems,—not two plays for each year. It is clear-as a matter of numerical calculation, that if the whole of Shakespeare and the

whole of Bacon's acknowledged works belong to the same author, the writer was not a voluminous author - not by any means so voluminous as Miss Braddon or Sir Walter Scott.

Therefore, let this objection stand aside; it vanishes into invisibility as soon as it is accurately tested.

5.-BACON'S ASSURANCE OF IMMORTALITY,

Bacon's confident assurance of holding a lasting place in literature is one of the most striking features of his character, and it marks him as specially endowed with the poetic consciousness and temperament. In this respect Bacon and Shakespeare are absolutely alike, and the bold unhesitating assertion of this claim to immortality, which is common to the two, is almost unparalleled in literature. For, of all poets that ever lived, not one ever made more confident appeals to posterity, never did any poet more triumphantly discount the immortality of which he was absolutely assured. If we only take the couplets of the Sonnets, this assurance of lasting renown is more or less clearly expressed in nearly a score of them-in Sonnets. 15, 17, 18, 19, 54, 55, 60, 63, 65, 74, 81, 100, 101, 104, 107, 123. And in many of the Sonnets the vision of future fame is the leading idea of the entire poem, as in 55, 63, 65, 74, 81, 100, and 101.

This very marked characteristic of the Sonnets is one of the reasons for attributing to many of them a dramatic character. The poet who was so proudly conscious of future fame could not, in his own person, have written 71 and 72; the bold claimant to lasting renown could not have said on his own account :

For I am shamed by that which I bring forth,
And so should you, to love things nothing worth.

(Sonnet 72).

This mood, does not last long, for when we pass on to the next Sonnet the dramatic entourage has changed.

AMAZING SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.

4I

Bacon is speaking for himself, and the very premature consciousness of old age which led him, when comparatively a young man, to write, "I wax now somewhat ancient; one-and-thirty years is a great deal of sand in the hour-glass," expresses its sense of antiquity in the dejected minor strain,

That time of year thou mayst in me behold

When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

Bare, ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
(Sonnet 73).

But the strong grasp on futurity remains-we soon hear the note of triumph mingling with the sense of physical decay; his "Line" will live after his body has passed away: Let that which is to be "the prey of worms or the "coward conquest of a wretch's knife forgotten :

The worth of that is that which it contains
And that is this, and this with thee remains.

(Sonnet 74).

be

This anticipation of immortality is one of the most characteristic marks of the poetic temperament, and the same bold appropriation of future fame is remarkably characteristic of Bacon. That proud appeal to posterity which pervades the Sonnets (it could not have found equally clear expression in the dramas or the other poems) finds equally articulate voice in Bacon's will, and in the frequent professions which he makes that his writings are intended to secure "merit and memory” in succeeding ages, even if he and they are neglected or misunderstood by his contemporaries. There is a magnificent audacity in some of these declarations which is only paralleled by the equally daring prophesies of these poems. Perhaps the most remarkable of them all is one that has not hitherto been specially noticed. In Bacon's Dedication of his "Advancement of Learning" to the King, he

refers to the fortune and accomplishments of that variously gifted monarch as uniting "the power and fortune of a King, the knowledge and illumination of a Priest and the learning and universality of a Philosopher;" and then he refers to his own work in these most astonishing terms: "This propriety (i.e., property or characteristic), inherent, and individual attribute in your Majesty, deserveth to be expressed, not only in the fame and admiration of the present time, nor in the history and tradition of the ages succeeding, but also in SOME SOLID WORK, FIXED Y MEMORIAL,

AND IMMORTAL MONUMENT, BEARING A CHARACTER OR SIGNATURE BOTH OF THE POWER OF A KING, AND THE DIFFERENCE AND PERFECTION OF SUCH A KING. THEREFORE I DID CONCLUDE WITH MYSELF THAT I COULD NOT MAKE UNTO YOUR MAJESTY A BETTER OBLATION THAN OF SOME TREATISE TENDING TO THAT END."

A more majestic and poetic anticipation of immortality. never issued from human pen. The magnificent egotism is here sublime; in almost every other case it would be ridiculous. It could only have come from the same pen which, a few years before, had written :

You still shall live (such virtue hath my pen)

Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.

Or,

Thou in this shalt find thy monument,

(Sonnet 81.)

When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent.

(Ib. 107.)

Not often in straightforward prose do we meet with the Horatian vaunt :

Exegi monumentum ære perennius

Regalique situ pyramidum altius;

Quod non imber edax, non Aquilo impotens

Possit diruere, aut innumerabilis

Annorum series et fuga temporum.

ANTICIPATIONS OF IMMORTALITY,

43

But Bacon is equal to this immense self-consciousness, which, in an inferior writer, would be insufferable audacity. There is nothing inconsistent with what we know of his own self-estimation in supposing that he, and he alone in that age, was capable of this proud utterance:

Not marble, nor the gilded ornaments

Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme ;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone, besmeared with sluttish time.
When wasteful wars shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,

Not Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.

'Gainst death and all oblivious enmity

Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity,

That wear the world out to the ending doom.'-(55.)

The immortality which Bacon anticipated for himself has certainly been achieved, and when his real relation to the Shakespeare drama is accepted by the world, as it assuredly will be, all that he claimed and prophesied will be admitted. The tremendous tragedy of his fall still blocks his way to the supremest throne of Parnassus. Detraction and calumny still blacken his reputation. The worst construction is put upon his faults, and his many virtues and excellencies are forgotten or explained away. It will not be always so.

I will venture to point out some passages in Shakespeare which appear to me to reflect some of the personal characteristics of Bacon. The accuracy and significance of the resemblance will not at once commend itself to every one, and I do not attach any great importance to them. Let them be taken for what they are worth.

(1) One very curious habit of Bacon's seems to have been to strike himself on the breast when he wished to put