this comprehensible conception is, at least, better than any incomprehensible absurdity that ever was, or can be, invented. The Baconian caution is a good one: that we are not to give out "a dream of our fancy for an exemplar of the world," but rather, "under divine favor, an apocalyptic revelation and true vision of the tracks and ways of the Creator in Nature and His creatures." 1

§ 8. SCIENCE IN POETRY.

That the author of these plays had arrived at a similar view of the constitution of the universe, is made clear in many passages. How else can we understand those remarkable lines of the "Tempest," in which, having brought upon the stage a scene among the gods, and made Juno, Ceres, and Iris enact a play before mortal eyes, when all at once they vanish at the bidding of the magician, Prospero, he makes him say:

"These our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all that it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made of; and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep."— Act IV. Sc. 1.

For, this vision of a world and this vision of the stage are made essentially in the same manner and of the same stuff, are both alike substantial; and yet, they may vanish, like an insubstantial pageant, into oblivion, at the bidding of the Great Magician, when his time shall come.

Again, says Bacon, in the De Augmentis, "This Janus of the imagination has too different faces; for the face towards reason hath the print of truth, but the face towards action hath the print of goodness"; an expression, which

1 Lectori, Works (Boston), VII. 161.

appears again in a letter, in which he prays that, living or dying, "the print of the goodness of King James" may be in his heart; but all Calibans, or other human monsters, "turn'd to barnacles, or to apes

With foreheads villainous low,".

and all Stephanos and Trinculos, "abhorred slaves," that "steal by line and level," and

"Which any print of goodness will not take,

Being capable of all ill,"

this magician, by the help of his invisible Ariel, would soundly hunt out of his kingdom, when his "Genius" should have "the air of freedom"; and his labors would not cease until all his enemies were laid at his feet. And he was able to make this speech :—

"Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves;
And ye, that on the sands with printless foot
Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him,
When he comes back; you demi-puppets, that
By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,
Whereof the ewe not bites; and you whose pastime
Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice
To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid
(Weak masters though ye be) I have bedimm'd
The noontide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds,
And 'twixt the green sea and the azur'd vault
Set roaring war: to the dread rattling thunder
Have I given fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak
With his own bolt: the strong-bas'd promontory
Have I made shake; and by the spurs pluck'd up
The pine and cedar: graves, at my command,
Have wak'd their sleepers; oped, and let them forth
By my so potent art. But this rough magic

--

I here abjure; and when I have requir'd
Some heavenly music, (which even now I do,)
To work mine end upon their senses, that
This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff,
Bury it certain fadoms in the earth,

And, deeper than did ever plummet sound,
I'll drown my book."— Act V. Sc. 1.

The "Tempest" was nearly the last play written, or perhaps 1 Letter of July 30, 1624, Works (Philad.), III. 24.

the last but one or two; and his book would seem to have been drowned for a long time, and buried so deep as to be beyond the reach of any but a "Delian diver." 1 Well might these deep-sounding revelations and true visions of the traces and stamp of the Creator on his creations wake up whole books in the soul of Jean Paul Richter! These all-comprehending conceptions could come only from the philosopher, the student of Nature as well as of Plato, whose thought had fathomed the depths and hidden mysteries of the universe, and discovered that “God hath framed the mind of man as a mirror or glass, capable of the image of the universal world." For, as he says, again, "that alone is true philosophy, which doth faithfully render the very words of the world, and it is written no otherwise than the world doth dictate, it being nothing else but the image or reflection of it, not adding anything of its own, but only iterates and resounds." 2 In his scheme, philosophy is the text, and the universe is the book of plates, the illustration and the proof so far; that is, as far as it is visible and knowable to observation and experience beyond all the scopes of physical science, it is, as it were, the book without the plates, and for illustration, the reader must, like the mathematician, construct his own models, charts, and diagrams. Some men, like children, see nothing but the plates, and continue all their lives to be dazzled with the pictures, scarcely conceiving that there is any text at all; being capable of nothing but miraculous child's fables, mystic revelations, airy charms, and various kinds of spirit-playing and spirit-rapping. Things which fly too high over their heads must be drawn down to their senses. Some others advance to the end of the plates and stop there, finding no more proof of any fact, and so thinking that they have arrived at the land's end, because all around appears to be open sea; while some others, again,

1 Timæus of Plato, 71; De Aug. Trans., Works (Boston), IX. 22.
2 Wisd. of the Ancts., Works (Mont.), II. 2.

stretch onward, constructing their own plates, charts, compasses, scopes, being born pilots, and finding no end to the universe of fact but in the limits of their own lives and labors; sometimes too safely denying more land than they can discover. Still others, by the light of superior genius shining within them and reflected in the world without them, industriously, perseveringly, and fainting not, hold still onward, believing yet with such as Bacon, or Columbus, that "they are but ill discoverers who think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea";—until they run against Fate:

"Othello. Who can control his fate?

Here is my journey's end, here is my butt,

And very sea-mark of my utmost sail.”. - Act V. Sc. 2.

66

Bacon understood how "knowledge is a double of that which is," and that "the truth of being and the truth of knowing is all one." He considered that "the sovereignty of man lieth hid in knowledge," as it is beautifully prefigured in the Prospero of the "Tempest," and he recognized "the happy match between the mind of man and the nature of things, and the science or providence comprehending all things"; as Hamlet saw, that there was a special providence in the fall of a sparrow." He looked upon the universe as the book of God's works, and he frequently quotes Solomon as saying, "That it is the glory of God to conceal a thing, but the glory of a king to find it out, as if, according to the innocent play of children, the Divine Majesty took delight to hide his works, to the end to have them found out";1 and he says, again, “The spirit of man is the lamp of God, wherewith he searcheth the inwardness of all secrets." And so says the Soothsayer in the play :"In Nature's infinite book of secrecy,

1

A little I can read."— Ant. and Cleo., Act I. Sc. 2.

Nor did he think it was, in Nature,

66

A juggling trick, to be secretly open." - Tro. and Cr., Act V. Sc. 2

1 Advancement.

2 Works (Mont.), XVI. Note 66.

It is no wonder that Goethe, finding that his own open secret," as well as many other things, for the means of comprehending which, he was, as he in some degree acknowledges, much indebted to the philosophies of Plato, Spinoza, and Kant, had been known to Shakespeare as well, should pronounce this wonderful Bard of Avon the greatest of modern poets. Modern transcendental moralists and poets have discovered many new wonders in Shakespeare. They have much to say about man being "a microcosm," though not always particular to mention that the doctrine is as old as Plato, or the fable of Pan, nor that Bacon fully comprehended the meaning of that wise saw, as any one may see in his interpretation of that fable; but he frequently speaks of the "ancient opinion that man was microcosmus," and of "the spirit of man, whom they call the microcosm"; and we have it in the play thus : —

"Men. If you see this in the map of my microcosm, follows it, that I am known well enough, too?"— Cor., Act II. Sc. 1.

In the style of poetry, but not less according to the truth of philosophy, Goethe images forth the visible universe as the "garment" of God:

"Spirit. Thus, at the roaring loom of Time I ply, And weave the garment which thou see'st him by."

Bacon, in like manner, interpreting the Fable of Cupid, as being intended to shadow forth some conception of the Divine Person under the image of Cupid born of the egg, hatched beneath the brooding wing of Night, and coeval with Chaos, speaks of the primary visible matter as being "the vest of Cupid"; and a like philosophy seems to underlie this passage from the Othello:

"Cas. Most fortunately: he hath achiev'd a maid
That paragons description and wild fame;
One that excels the quirks of blazoning pens,

And in th' essential vesture of creation

Does bear all excellency." - Act II. Sc. 1.

and this, again, from the "Merchant of Venice":