The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded

by Delia Salter Bacon

CHAPTER IV.

POLITICAL RETROSPECT.

'I think he'll be to Rome
As is the osprey to the fish, who takes it
By sovereignty of nature.'

FLOWER OF WARRIORS

The poet finds, indeed, this monstrosity full-blown in his time. He finds it 'in the civil streets,' 'talking plain cannon', 'humming batteries' in the most unmistakeable manner, with no particular account of its origin to give, without, indeed, appearing to recollect exactly how it came there, retaining only a general impression, that a descent from the celestial regions had, in some way, been effected during some undated period of human history, under circumstances which the memory of man was not expected to be able to recall in detail, and a certificate to that effect, divinely subscribed, was understood to be included among its properties, though it does not appear to have been, on the face of it, so absolutely conclusive as to render a little logical demonstration, on the part of royalty itself, superfluous.

It was not very far from this time, that a very able and loyal servant of the crown undertook, openly, to assist the royal memory on this delicate point; and, though the details of that historical representation, and the manner of it, are, of course, quite different from those of the Play, it will be found, upon careful examination, not so dissimilar in purport as the exterior would have seemed to imply. The philosopher does not feel called upon, in either case, to begin by contradicting flatly, in so many words, the theory which he finds the received one on that point. Even the poet, with all his freedom, is compelled to go to work after another fashion.

'And thus do we, of wisdom, and of reach,
With windlasses, and with ASSAYS of BIAS,
By indirections find directions out.'

He has his own way of creating an historical retrospect. No one need know that it is a retrospect; no one will know it, perhaps, who has not taken the author's clue elsewhere. The crisis is already reached when the play begins. The collision between the civil want and the military government is at its height. It is a revolution on which the curtain rises. It is a city street filled with dark, angry swarms of men, who have come forth to seek out this government, in the person of its chief, who stop only to conduct their summary trial of it, and then hurry on to execute their verdict.

But the poet arrests this revolution. Before we proceed any further, 'Hear me speak,' he cries, through the lips of the plebeian leader. The man of science demands a hearing, before this movement proceed any further. He has a longer story to tell than that with which Menenius Agrippa appeases his Romans. There is a cry of war in the streets. The obscure background of that portentous scene opens, and the long vista of the heroic ages, with all its pomp and stormy splendours, scene upon scene, grows luminous behind it. The foreground is the same. The arrested mutineers stand there still, with the frown knit in their angry brows, with the weapons of their civil warfare in their hands; there is no stage direction for a change of costume, and none perceives that they have grown older as they stand, and that the shadow of the elder time is on them. But the manager of this stage is one who knows that the elder time of history is the childhood of his kind.

There is a cry of war in that ancient street. The enemy of the infant state is in arms. The people rush forth to conflict with the leader of armies at their head. But this time, for the first time in the history of literature, the philosopher goes with him. The philosopher, hitherto, has been otherwise occupied. He has been too busy with his fierce war of words; he has had too much to do with his abstract generals, his logical majors and minors, to get them in squadrons and right forms of war, to have any eye for such vulgar solidarities. 'All men are mortal. Peter and John are men. Therefore Peter and John are mortal,' he concludes; but that is his nearest and most vivacious approach to historical particulars, and his cell is broad enough to contain all that he needs for his processes and ends. He finds enough and to spare, ready prepared to his hands, in the casual, rude, unscientific observations and spontaneous distinctions of the vulgar. His generalizations are obtained from their hasty abstractions. It has never occurred to him, till now, that he must begin with criticising these terms; that he must begin by making a new and scientific terminology, which shall correspond to terms in nature, and not be air-lines merely;—that he must take pains to collect them himself, from severest scrutiny of particulars, before ever he can arrive at 'the notions of nature,' the universal notions, which differ from the spontaneous specific notions of men, and their chimeras; before ever he can put man into his true relations with nature, before ever he can teach him to speak the word which she responds to,—the words of her dictionary—the word which is power.

This is, in fact, the first time that the philosopher has undertaken to go abroad. It is the first time he has ever been in the army. Softly, invisibly, he goes. There is nothing to show that he is there. As modestly, as unnoticed, as the Times 'own correspondent,' amid all the clang and tumult, the pomp and circumstance of glorious war, he goes. But he is there notwithstanding. There is no breath of scholasticism, no perfume of the cell, that the most vigorous and robust can perceive, in his battle. The scene unwinds with all its fierce reality, undimmed by the pale cast of thought: the shout is as wild, the din as fearful, the martial fury rises, as if the old heroic poet had it still in hand.

But it is not the poet's voice that you hear, bursting forth into those rhythmical ecstasies of heroic passion,—unless that faint tone of exaggeration,—that slight prolonging of it, be his. That mad joy in human blood, that wolfish glare, that lights the hero's eye, gets no reflection in his: those fiendish boasts are not from his lips. Through all the frenzy of that demoniacal scene, he is still himself, with all his human sense about him. Through all the crowded incidents of that day of blood—into which he condenses, with dramatic license, the siege and assault of the city, the conquest and plunder of it, and the conflict in the open field,—he is keeping watch on his hero. He is eyeing him, and sketching him, as critically as if he were indeed an entomological or botanical specimen. He is making a specimen of him, for scientific purposes,—not 'a preservation,'—he does not think much of dried specimens in science. He proposes to dismiss the logical Peter and John, and the logical man himself, that abstract notion which the metaphysicians have been at loggerheads about so long. It is the true heroism,—it is the sovereign flower which he is in search of. This specimen that he is taking here will, indeed, go by the board. He is taking him on his negative table. But for that purpose,—in order to get him on his 'table of rejections,' it is necessary to take him alive. The question is of government, of supreme power, and universal suffrage, of the abnegation of reason, of the annihilation of judgment, in behalf of a superiority which has been understood, heretofore, to admit of no question. The question is of awe and reverence, and worship, and submission. The Poet has to put his sacrilegious hand through the dust that lies on antique time, through the sanctity of prescription and time-honoured usage, through 'mountainous error' 'too highly heaped for truth to overpeer,' in order to make this point in his scientific table. And he wishes to blazon it a little. He will pin up this old exploded hero—this legacy of barbaric ages, to the ages of human advancement—in all his actualities, in all the heroic splendours of his original, without 'diminishing one dowle that's in his plume.'

But this retrospect has not yet reached its limit. It is not enough to go back, in the unravelling of this business, to the full-grown hero on the field of victory. 'For that which, in speculative philosophy, corresponds to the cause in practical philosophy becomes the rule;' and it is the Cure of the Common Weal, which the poet is proposing, and having determined to proceed specially against Caius Marcius, or against him first, he undertakes now to 'delve him to the root.' We are already on the battle field; but before ever a stroke is struck there, before he will attempt to show us the instinct of the warrior in his game,—'he is a lion that I am proud to hunt,'—when all is ready and just as the hunt is going to begin, he steals softly back to Rome; he unlocks the hero's private dwelling, he lays open to us the secrets of that domestic hearth, the secrets of that nursery in which his hero had had his training; he shows us the breasts from which he drew that martial fire; he produces the woman alive who sent him to that field. [Act 1, Scene 3. An apartment in the martial chieftain's house; two women, 'on two low stools, sewing.' 'There is where your throne begins, whatever it be.'] In that exquisite relief which the natural graces of youth and womanhood provide for it, in the young, gentle, feminine wife, desolate in her husband's absence, starting at the rumour of news from the camp, and driving back from her appalled conception, the images which her mother-in-law's fearful speech suggests to her,—in that so beautiful relief, comes out the picture of the Roman matron, the woman in whom the martial instincts have been educated and the gentler ones repressed, by the common sentiments of her age and nation, the woman in whom the common standard of virtue, the conventional virtue of her time, has annihilated the wife and the mother.

Virgilia. Had he died in the business, madam, what then?

Volumnia. Then his good report should have been my son, I therein would have found issue.

It is the multiplied force of a common instinct in the nation, it is the pride of conquest in a whole people, erected into the place of virtue and usurping all its sanctity, which has entered this woman's nature and reformed its yielding principles. It is the Martial Spirit that has subdued her, for she is virtuous and religious. It is her people's god to whom she has borne her son, and in his temple she has reared him.

But the poet is not satisfied with all this. It is not enough to introduce us to the hero's mother and permit us to listen to her confidential account of his birth and training. He will produce the little Coriolanus himself—Coriolanus in germ—he will show us the rudiments of those instincts, which his unscientific education has stimulated into such monstrous 'o'ergrowth' (but not enlightened), so that the hero on the battle-field who is winning there the oaken crown, which he will transmit if he can to his posterity, is only, after all, a boy overgrown,—a boy with his boyishness unnaturally prolonged by his culture,—the impersonation of the childishness of a childish time,—the crowned impersonation of the instinct which is SOVEREIGN in an age of instinct. He shows us the drum and the sword in the nursery, and the boy who would rather look at the military parade than his schoolmaster;—he shows us the little viperous egg of a hero torturing and tearing the butterfly, with his 'confirmed countenance, in one of his father's moods.'

Surely we have reached 'the grub' at last, 'the creeping thing' that will have one day imperial armies in its wings. And we return from this little excursion to the field again, in time for the battle; and when we see the tiger in the man let loose there, and the boy's father comes out in one of his own moods, that we may note it the better; we begin to observe where we are in the human history, and what age of the Advancement of Learning it is that this poet is driving at so stedfastly, and trying to get dated; and whether it is indeed one from which the advancing ages of Learning can accept the bourne of the human wisdom, the limit of that advance.

'And to speak truly [and that after all is the best way of speaking] Antiquitas seculi juventus mundi.'

'Those times are the ancient times, when the world is ancient and not those we account ancient by a computation backward from ourselves.'—Advancement of Learning. But that was put down in a book in which we have only general statements, very wise indeed, and both new and true, most exactly true, but not ready for practice, as the author stops to tell us, and it is practice he is aiming at. That is from a book in which we have only 'the husks and shells of sciences, all the kernel being forced out,' as the author informs us, 'by the torture and press of the method.' But it was a method which saved them, notwithstanding. This is the book that contains the 'nuts,' and this is the kernel that goes in that particular shell or a corner of it, 'Antiquitas seculi juventus mundi.'

There, on the spot, he shows us the process by which a king,—an historic king,—is made. He detects and brings out and blazons, the moment in which the inequality of fortune begins, in the division of the spoils of victory. His hero is not, as he takes pains to tell us, covetous,—unless it be a sin to covet honour, if it be, he is the most offending soul alive;—it is because he is not mercenary, that his soldiers will enrich him. The poet shows us where the throne begins, and the machinery of that engine which the earth shrinks from when it moves. On his stage, it is the moment in which, the soldiers raise their victorious leader from his feet, and carry him in triumph above them. We are there at the ceremony, for this is selected, illuminated history; this, too, is what he calls 'visible history,' but amid all those martial acclamations and plaudits, the philosopher contrives to get in a word.

'He that has effected his good will, has o'ertaken my act.'

From the field he tracks his hero to the chair of state. First we have the news of the victory in the city, and its effect:—

'I'll report it
Where senators shall mingle tears with smiles;
Where great patricians shall attend, and shrug;
I' the end admire; where ladies shall be frighted,
And, gladly quaked, hear more; where the dull tribunes,
That, with the fusty plebeians, hate thine honours,
Shall say against their hearts, We thank the gods
Our Rome hath such a soldier.'

Then we have the hero's return—the conqueror's reception; first in the city whose battle he has won, and afterwards his reception in the city he has conquered. Here is the latter:—

'Your native town you entered like a post,
And had no welcomes home; but he returns,
Splitting the air with noises.
And patient fools,
Whose children he hath slain, their base throats tear
WITH GIVING HIM GLORY.'

'A goodly city is this Antium! City,
'Tis I that made thy widows; many an heir
Of these fair edifices, 'fore my wars
Have I heard groan and droop. Then know me not,
Lest that thy wives with spits, and boys with stones,
In puny battle slay me.' [—know me not—lest—'
'Let us kill him, and we will have corn, at our own price.']

But the Poet does not forget that it is the proof of the military virtue, as well as the history of the military power, that he has undertaken; 'the touch of its nobility,' as he himself words it. He is trying it by his own exact scientific standard; he is putting the test to it which the new philosophy, which is the philosophy of nature, authorises.

For, in truth, this philosopher, this civilian, is a little jealous of this simple virtue of valour, which he finds in his time, as in the barbaric ages, still in such esteem, as 'the chiefest virtue, and that which most dignifies the haver.' He is of opinion, that there may be some other profession, beside that of the sword, worth an honest man's attention; that, if the world were more enlightened, there would be another kind of glory, that would make 'the garland of war' shrivel. He thinks that Jupiter, and not Mars, should reign supreme: that there is another kind of distinction and leadership, better worth the public esteem, better deserving the popular gratitude and reverence.

And when he has once taken an analysis of this kind in hand, he is not going to permit any scruples of delicacy to impair the operation. He will invade that graceful modesty in the hero, who shrinks from hearing his exploits narrated. He will analyse that blush, and show us chemically what its hue is made of. He will bring out those retiring honours from the haze and mist which the vague, unanalytic, popular notions, have gathered about them. Tucked up in scarlet, braided with gold, under its forest of feathers, through all its pomp and blazonry, through all its drums; and trumpets, and clarions, undaunted by the popular cry, undaunted by that so potent word of 'patriotism' which guards it from invasion, he will search it out.

For this purpose he will go a little nearer to it than is the heroic poet's wont. When the city is wild with the news of this great victory, and the streets are swarming at the tidings of the hero's approach, he will take his stand with the family party, and beckon us to a place where we can listen to what is going on there, though the heroics and the blank verse must halt for it.

The glee and fluster might appear to a cool spectator a little undignified; but then we are understood to be, like Menenius, old friends of the family, and too much carried away with the excitement of the moment to be very critical.

Volumnia. Honourable Menenius, my boy, Marcius, approaches. For the love of Juno, let's go.

Men. Ha! Marcius coming home!

Vol. Ay, worthy Menenius, and with most prosperous approbation.

Men. Take my cap, Jupiter, and I thank thee. Hoo! Marcius coming home?

Two Ladies. Nay, 't is true.

Vol. Look! Here's a letter from him; the state hath another, his wife another, and I think there's one at home for you.

Men. I will make my very house reel to night:—A letter for me?

The Wife. Yes, certainly, there a letter for you; I saw it.

Men. A letter for me! It gives me an estate of seven years' health; in which time I will make a lip at the physician … Is he not wounded? He was wont to come home wounded.

The Wife. Oh, no, no, no!

The Mother. Oh, he is wounded. I thank the gods for 't.

Men. So do I, too, if it be not too much:—Brings a victory in his pocket: The wounds become him.

Vol. On's brow, Menenius: he comes the third time home with the oaken garland.

Men…. Is the senate possessed of this?

Vol. Good ladies, let's go! Yes, yes, yes: the senate has letters from the general, wherein he gives my son the whole name of the war.

Valeria. In truth, there's wondrous things spoke of him.

Men. Wondrous, ay, I warrant you…

Vir. The gods grant them true!

Vol. True? Pow wow!

Men. True? I'll be sworn they are true. Where's he wounded? [To the Tribunes, who come forward.] Marcius is coming home: he has—more cause to be—PROUD.—Where is he wounded?

Vol. I' the shoulder, and i' the left arm: There will be large cicatrices to shew the people, when he shall stand FOR HIS PLACE. He received in the repulse of Tarquin seven hurts i' the body.

Men. One in the neck, and two in the thigh,—there's nine that I know.

Vol. He had, before this last expedition, twenty-five wounds upon him.

Men. Now it's twenty-seven: every gash was an enemy's grave.

[Of course there is no satire intended here at all. This is a Poet who does not know what he is about.]

But now we come to the blank verse again; for at this moment the shout that announces the hero's entrance is heard; and, mingling with it, the martial tones of victory.

shout and flourish.
Hark! the trumpets!

Vol. These are the ushers of Marcius: before him
He carries noise; behind him he leaves tears.
Death, that dark spirit, in's nervy arm doth lie;
Which being advanced, declines, and then men die.

Then comes the imposing military pageant. A sennet. Trumpets sound, and enter the hero, 'crowned' with his oaken garland, sustained by the generals on either hand, with the victorious soldiers, and a herald proclaiming before him his victory.

Herald. Know, Rome, that all alone Marcius did fight
Within Corioli's gates: where he hath won
With fame, a name to Caius Marcius; these
In honour follows Coriolanus:
Welcome to Rome, renowned Coriolanus!

But while Rome is listening to this great story, and the people are shouting his name, the demi-god catches sight of his mother and of his wife; and full of private duty and affection, he forgets his state, his garland stoops, the conqueror is on his knee, in filial submission. The woman had said truly, 'my boy Marcius is coming home.' And when he greets the weeping Virgilia, who cannot speak but with her tears, these are the words with which he measures that private joy—

Would'st thou have laughed, had I come coffin'd home,
That weep'st to see me triumph? Ah, my dear,
Such eyes the widows in Corioli wear,
And mothers that lack sons.

No; these are the Poet's words, rather—'such eyes.'

Such eyes. It was the Poet who could look through the barriers—those hitherto impervious barriers of an enemy's town, and see in it, at that moment, eyes as beautiful—eyes that had been 'dove's eyes,' too, to those who had loved them, wet with other tears,—mothers that loved their sons, and 'lacked them'; it was the Poet to whose human sense those hard hostile walls dissolved and cleared away, till he could see the Volscian wives clasping their loves, as they 'came coffined home'; it was the Poet who dared to stain the joy and triumph of that fond meeting, the glory and pride of that triumphal entry, with those human thoughts; it was he who heard above the roll of the drum, and the swell of the clarions and trumpets, and the shout of the rejoicing multitude above the herald's voice—the groans of mortal anguish in the field, the cries of human sorrow in the city, the shrieks of mothers that lacked sons, the greetings of wives whose loves 'came coffined home.' And he does not mind aggravating the intense selfishness, and narrowness, and stolidity of these private passions and affections of the individual to a truly unnatural and diabolical intensity, by charging on poor Volumnia and Marcius his own reminiscences; as if they could have dared to heighten their joy at that moment by counting its cost—as if they could have looked in the face—as if they could have comprehended, in its actual dimensions, the theme of their vulgar, narrow, unlearned exultation. But this is a trick this author is much given to, we shall find, when we come to study him carefully. He is not scrupulous on such points. He has a tolerable sense of the fitness of things, too. His dramatic conscience is as nice as another man's; but he is always ready to sin against it, when he sees reason. He is much like his own Mr. Slender in one respect, 'he will do anything in reason'; and his theory of the Chief End of Man appears to differ essentially from the one which our modern Doctors of 'Art' propound incidentally in their criticisms. It is the mother who cries, when she catches the swell of the trumpets that announce her son's approach—'These are the ushers of Marcius. Before him he carries noise.' It is the Poet who adds, sotto voce, 'behind him he leaves TEARS.'

'You are three,' says Menenius, after some further prolongation of these private demonstrations, addressing himself to the three victorious generals—

You are three,
That Rome should dote on: yet, by the faith of men,
We have some old crab-trees here at home, that will not
Be grafted to your relish. Yet WELCOME, WARRIORS:
We call a nettle but a nettle; and
The faults of fools, but folly.

But the herald is driving on the crowd; and considering how very public the occasion is, and how very, very private and personal all this chat is, it does appear to have stopped the way long enough. Thus hurried, the hero gives hastily a hand 'to HIS WIFE and MOTHER' [stage direction], but stops to say a word or two more, which has the merit of being at least to the POET'S purpose, though the common-weal may appear to be lost sight of in the HERO'S a little; and that delicacy and reserve of manner, that modesty of nature, which is the characteristic of this Poet's art, serves here, as elsewhere, to disguise the internal continuities of the poetic design. The careless eye will not track it in these finer touches. 'Where some stretched-mouth rascal' would have roared you out his prescribed moral, 'outscolding Termagant' with it, the Poet, who is the poet of truth, and who would have such fellows 'whipped' out of the sacred places of Art, with a large or small cord, as the case may be, is content to bring in his 'delicate burdens,' or to keep sight of them, at least, with some such reference to them as this—

'Ere in our own house I do shade my head,
The good patricians must be visited;
From whom I have received not only greetings
But with them change of honours'—[change.]

That is his visit to the state-house which he is speaking of. It is the Capitol which is put down in his plan of the city on his way to his own house. 'The state has a letter from him, and his wife another; and I think there is one for you, too.'

Volumnia understands that delicate intimation as to the change of honours, and in return, takes occasion to express to him, on the spot, her views about the consulship, and the use to which the new cicatrices are to be converted.

Coriolanus replies to this in words that admit, as this Poet's words often do, of a double construction; for the Poet is, indeed, lurking under all this. He is always present, and he often slips in a word for himself, when his characters are busy, and thinking of their own parts only. He is very apt to make use of occasions for emphasis, to put in one word for his speakers, and two for himself. It is irregular, but he does not stand much upon precedents; it was the only way he had of writing his life then—

'Know, good mother, I had rather be their servant in my way, Than sway with them in theirs. Cominius. On, to THE CAPITOL.' [Flourish Cornets. Exeunt in state, as before. The Tribunes remain.]

And when the great pageant has moved on 'in state, as before'—when the shouts of the people, and the triumphal swell and din, have died away, this is the manner in which our two tribunes look at each other. They know their voices would not make so much as a ripple, at that moment, in the tide of that great sea of popular ignorance, which it is their business to sway,—the tide which is setting all one way then, in one of its monstrous swells, and bearing every living thing with it,—the tide which is taking the military hero 'On to THE CAPITOL.' But though they cannot then oppose it, they can note it. And it is thus that they register that popular confirmation at home, of the soldier's vote on the field.

It is a picture of the hero's return, good for all ages in its living outline, composed in that 'charactery' which lays the past and future open. It is a picture good for the Roman hero's entry; 'and were now the general of our gracious empress, as in good time he may, from Ireland coming, bringing rebellion broached on his sword'—would it, or would it not, suit him?

It is a picture of the hero's return, good for all ages in its main feature, for all the ages, at least of a brutish popular ignorance, of a merely instinctive human growth and formation; but it is a picture taken from the life,—caught,—detained with the secret of that palette, whose secret none has yet found, and the detail is all, not Roman, but, Elizabethan. Those 'variable complexions,' that one sees, 'smothering the stalls, bulks, windows, filling the leads,' and roofs, even to the 'ridges,' all agreeing in one expression, are Elizabethan. It is an Elizabethan crowd that we have got into, in some way, and it is worth noting if it were only for that. There goes 'the seld shown flamen, puffing his way to win a vulgar station,' here is a 'veiled dame' who lets us see that 'war of white and damask in her nicely gawded cheeks,' a moment;—look at that 'kitchen malkin,' peering over the wall there with 'her richest lockram' 'pinned on her reechy neck,' eyeing the hero as he passes; and look at this poor baby here, this Elizabethan baby, saved, conserved alive, crying himself 'into a rapture' while his 'prattling nurse' has ears and eyes for the hero only, as 'she chats him.' Look at them all, for every creature you see here, from 'the seld shown flamen' to the 'kitchen malkin,' belongs soul and body to 'our gracious Empress,' and Essex and Raleigh are still winning their garlands of the war,—that is when the scene is taken, but not when it was put in its place and framed in this composition; for their game was up ere then. England preferred old heroes and their claims to new ones. 'I fear there will a worse come in his place,' was the cautious instinct.

Bru. All tongues speak of him, and the bleared sights
Are spectacled to see him: Your prattling nurse
Into a rapture lets her baby cry,
While she chats him: the kitchin malkin pins
Her richest lockram 'bout her reechy neck.
Clambering the walls to eye him: stalls, bulks, windows,
Are smother'd up, leads fill'd, and ridges horsed
With variable complexions; all agreeing
In earnestness to see him: seld-shown flamens
Do press among the popular throng, and puff
To win a vulgar station: our veil'd dames
Commit the war of white and damask, in
Their nicely-gawded cheeks to the wanton spoil
Of Phoebus' burning kisses: such a pother,
As if that whatsoever god, who leads him,
Were slyly crept into his human powers,
And gave him graceful posture.

Sic. On the sudden,
I warrant him consul.

Bru. Then our office may,
During his power, go sleep.

Sic. He cannot temperately transport his honours
…. but will
Lose that he hath won.

Cru. In that there's comfort.

Sic. Doubt not, the commoners, for whom we stand,—

[While they resolve upon the measures to be taken, which we shall note elsewhere, a messenger enters.]

Bru. What's the matter?

Mess. You are sent for to the Capitol. 'Tis thought,
That Marcius shall be consul: I have seen
The dumb men throng to see him, and the blind
To hear him speak: The matrons flung their gloves,
Ladies and maids the scarfs and handkerchiefs,
Upon him as he passed: the nobles bended,
As to Jove's statue; and the commons made
A shower, and thunder, with their caps, and shouts:
I never saw the like.

Bru. Lets to the Capitol; And carry with us ears and eyes for THE TIME, But hearts for the EVENT.

[And let us to the Capitol also, and hear the civic claim of the oaken garland, the military claim to dispose of the common-weal, as set forth by one who is himself a general 'commander-in-chief' of Rome's armies, and see whether or no the Poet's own doubtful cheer on the battle-field has any echo in this place.]

Com. It is held, That valour is the chiefest virtue, and Most dignifies the haver: IF IT BE, The man I speak of cannot in the world Be singly counterpois'd.

[If it be? And he goes on to tell a story which fits, in all its points, a great hero, a true chieftain, brave as heroes of old romance, who lived when this was written, concluding thus—]

Com. He stopped the fliers;
And, by his rare example, made the coward
Turn terror into sport: as waves before
A vessel under sail, SO MEN OBEY'D,
And fell below his stem: his sword, (death's stamp.)
Where it did mark, it took; from face to foot
He was a thing of blood, whose every motion
Was timed with dying cries: alone he enter'd
The mortal gate o'the city, which he painted
With shunless destiny, aidless came off,
And with a sudden re-enforcement struck
Corioli, like a planet: now, ALL'S HIS:
When by and by the din of war 'gan pierce
His ready sense: then straight his doubled spirit
Re-quicken'd what in flesh was fatigate,
And to the battle came he; where he did
Run reeking o'er the lives of men, as if
'Twere a perpetual spoil: and till we call'd
Both field and city ours, he never stood
To ease his breast with panting.

Men. WORTHY MAN!

First Sen. He cannot but with measure fit the honours Which we devise him.

[One more quality, however, his pleader insists on, as additional proof of this 'fitness' for though it is a negative one, its opposite had not been reckoned among the kingly virtues, and the poet takes some pains to bring that opposite quality into relief, throughout, by this negative.]

Com. Our spoils he kicked at; And look'd upon things precious, as they were The common muck o' the world.

Men. HE'S RIGHT NOBLE; Let him be call'd for.

First Sen. Call for Coriolanus.

Off. He doth appear.

At the opening of this scene, two officers appeared on the stage, 'laying cushions,' for this is one of those specimens of the new method of investigation applied to the noblest subjects, 'which represents, as it were, to the eye, the whole order of the invention,' and into the Capitol stalks now the casque, for this is that 'step from the casque to the cushion' which the Poet is considering in the abstract; but it does not suit his purpose to treat of it in these abstract terms merely, because 'reason cannot be so sensible.' This, too, is one of those grand historic moments which this new, select, prepared history must represent to the eye in all its momentous historic splendour, for this is the kind of popular instruction which reproduces the past, which represents the historic event, not in perspective, but as present. And this is the 'business,' and this is the play in which we are told 'action is eloquence, and the eyes of the ignorant more learned than the ears.'

The seats of state are prepared for him. 'Call Coriolanus,' is the senate's word. The conqueror's step is heard. 'He does appear.'

Men. The senate, Coriolanus, are well pleased
To make thee consul.

Cor. I do owe them still
My life, and services.

Men. IT THEN REMAINS,
THAT YOU DO SPEAK TO THE PEOPLE.

Cor. I do beseech you,
Let me overleap that custom.

Sic. Sir, the people
Must have their voices; neither will they bate
One jot of their ceremony.

Men. Put them not to't:—[his friendly adviser says.]
Pray you, go fit you to the custom; and
Take to you, as your predecessors have,
Your honour, with your form.

Cor. It is a part
That I shall blush in acting, and might well
Be taken from the people.

Bru. Mark you that!

Cor. To brag unto them,—Thus I did, and thus;—
Show them the unaching scars which I should hide,
As if I had received them for the hire
Of their breath only.

CHAPTER V.

THE POPULAR ELECTION.

'The greater part carries it.
If he would but incline to the people,
There never was a worthier man.'

And yet, after all, that is what he wants for them, and must have or he is nothing; for as the Poet tells us elsewhere, 'our monarchs and our outstretched heroes are but the beggar's shadows.' The difficulty is, that he wishes to take his 'hire' in some more quiet way, without being rudely reminded of the nature of the transaction.

But the Poet's toils are about him. The man of science has caught the hero, the king in germ; the dragon wings are not yet spread. He wishes to exhibit the embryo monarch in this particular stage of his development, and the scientific process proceeds with as little regard to the victim's wishes, as if he were indeed that humble product of nature to which the Poet likens him. 'There's a differency between a grub and a butterfly; yet your butterfly was a grub.' Just on that step between 'the casque and the cushion,' the philosopher arrests him.

For this history denotes, as we have seen, a foregone conclusion. The scholar has privately anatomized in his study the dragon's wings, and this theatrical synthesis is designed to be an instructive one. He wishes to show, in a palpable form, what is and what is not, essential to the mechanism of that greatness which, though it presents itself to the eye in the contemptible physique, and moral infirmity and pettiness of the human individual, is yet clothed with powers so monstrous, so real, so terrific, that all men are afflicted with them;—this thing in which 'the conditions of a man are so altered,' this thing which 'has grown from man to dragon, which is more than a creeping thing.' He will show that after all it is nothing in the world but the popular power itself, the power of the people instinctively, unscientifically and unartistically exercised.

The Poet has analysed that so potent name by which men call it, and he will show upon his stage, by that same method which his followers have made familiar to us, in other departments of investigation, the elements of its power. He will let us see how it was those despised 'mechanics,' those 'poor citizens,' with their strong arms and voices, who were throwing themselves,—in their enthusiasm,—en-masse into that engine, and only asking to be welded in it; that would have made of this citizen a thing so terrific. He will show how, after all, it was the despised commons who were making of that citizen a king, of that soldier a monarch,—who were changing with the alchemy of the 'shower and thunder they made with their caps and voices,' his oak leaves and acorns, into gold and jewels.

He will show it on the platform of a state, where that vote is formally and constitutionally given, and not in a state where it is only a virtual and tacit one. He will show it in detail. He will cause the multitude to be represented, and pass by twos and threes across his stage, and compel the haughty chief, the would be ruler, to beg of them, individually, their suffrages, and show them his claim,—such as it is, the 'unaching scars that he should hide.'

It is to this Poet's purpose to exhibit that despised element in the state, which the popular submission creates, that unnoticed element of the common suffrage which looks so smooth on its surface, which seems to the haughty chief so little worth his notice, when it goes his way and bears him on its crest. But the experimenter will undertake to show what it is by ruffling it, by instigating this chief to put himself in the madness of his private affections, in the frenzy of his pride, into open opposition with it. He will show us what it is by playing with it. He will wake it from its unvisited depths, and bid his hero strive with it.

He will show what that popular consent, or the consent of 'the commons' amounts to, in the king-making process, by omitting it or by withdrawing it, before it is too late to withdraw it;—according to the now well-known rules of that new art of scientific investigation, which was then getting worked out and cleared, from this author's own methods of investigation. For it was because this faculty was in him, so unlike what it was in others, that he was able to write that science of it, by which other men, stepping into his armour, have been able to achieve so much.

He will show how those dragon teeth and claws, that were just getting the steel into them, which would have armed that single will against the whole, and its weal, crumble for the lack of it; he will show us the new-fledged wings, with all their fresh gauds, collapsing and dissolving with that popular withdrawal. He will continue the process, till there is nothing left of all that gorgeous state pageant, which came in with the flourish of trumpets and the voice of the herald long and loud, and the echoing thunder of the commons, but a poor grub of a man, in his native conditions, a private citizen, denied even the common privilege of citizenship,—with only his wife and his mother and a friend or two, to cling to him,—turned out of the city gates, to seek his fortune.

But that is the moment in which the Poet ventures to bring out a little more fully, in the form of positive statement, that latent affirmation, that definition of the true nobility which underlies all the play and glistens through it in many a fine, but hitherto, unnoticed point; that affirmation which all these negatives conclude in, that latent idea of the true personal greatness and its essential relation to the common-weal and the state, which is the predominant idea of the play, which shapes all the criticism and points all the satire of it. It is there that the true hero speaks out for a moment from the lips of that old military heroism, of a greatness which does not cease when the wings of state drop off from it, of an honour that takes no stain though all the human voices join to sully it,—the dignity that rises and soars and gains the point of immutability, when all the world would have it under foot. But in that nobility men need training,—scientific training. The instinctive, unartistic human growth, or the empirical unscientific arts of culture, give but a vulgar counterfeit of it, or at best a poor, sickly, distorted, convulsive, unsatisfactory type of it, for 'being gentle, wounded,'—(and it is gentility and nobility and the true aristocracy that we speak of here,)—'craves a NOBLE CUNNING;' so the old military chieftain tells us. It is a cunning which his author does not put him upon practising personally. Practically he represents another school of heroes. It is the word of that higher heroism in which he was himself wanting, it is the criticism on his own part, it is the affirmation which all this grand historic negative is always pointing to, which the author borrows his lips to utter.

The result in this case, the overthrow of the military hero on his way to the chair of state, is occasioned by the premature arrogance to which his passionate nature impels him. For his fiery disposition refuses to obey the decision of his will, and overleaps in its passion, all the barriers of that policy which his calmer moments had prescribed. The result is occasioned by his open display of his contempt for the people, before he had as yet mastered the organizations which would make that display, in an unenlightened age, perhaps, a safe one.

This point of time is much insisted on, and emphasized.

'Let them pull all about mine ears,' cries the hero, as he enters his own house, after his first encounter with the multitude in their wrath.

'Let them pull all about mine ears, present me Death on the wheel, or at wild horses' heels, Or pile ten hills on the Tarpeian rock That the precipitation might down stretch Below the beam of sight, yet will I still— Be THUS to them.'

[For that is the sublime conclusion of these heroics.]

'You do the nobler,' responds the Coryphæus of that chorus of patricians who accompany him home, and who ought, of course, to be judges of nobility. But there is another approbation wanted. Volumnia is there; but she listens in silence. 'I muse,' he continues—

'I muse my mother
Does not approve me further—who was wont
To call them woollen vassals, things created
To buy and sell with groats; to show bare heads
In congregations, to YAWN, be STILL, AND WONDER,
When one but of my ordinance stood up
To speak of PEACE or WAR. I talk of you [to Volumnia.]
Why did you wish me milder? Would you have me
False to my nature? [Softly] Either say I play
The man I am.

Vol. O sir, sir, sir,
I would have had you put your power well on,
Ere you had worn it out.

Cor. Let go.

Vol. Lesser had been
The thwarting of your dispositions, IF
You had not shown them how you were disposed
Ere they lacked power to cross you.

Cor. Let them HANG!

Vol. Ay, and BURN too!

For that was the 'disposition' which these Commons, if they had waited but a little longer, might have 'lacked power to cross.' That was the disposition they had thwarted.

But then it is necessary to our purpose, as it was to the author's, to notice that the collision in this case is a forced one. It grows by plot. The people are put up to it. For there are men in that commonwealth who are competent to instruct the Commons in the doctrine of the common weal, and who are carefully and perseveringly applying themselves to that task; though they are men who know how to bide their time, and they will wait till the soaring insolence of the hero is brought into open collision with that enlightened popular will.

They will wait till the military hero's quarrel with the commonwealth breaks out anew. For they know that it lies in the nature of things, and cannot but occur. The éclat of his victory, and the military pride of the nation, films it over for a time; but the quarrel is a radical one, and cannot be healed.

For this chief of soldiers, and would-be head and ruler of the state knows no commonwealth. His soul is not large enough to admit of that conception. The walls of ignorance, that he shuts himself up in, darken and narrow his world to the sphere of his own microcosm,— and, therefore, there is a natural war between the world and him. The state of universal subjection, on the part of others, to his single exclusive passions and affections, the state in which the whole is sacrificed to the part, is the only state that will satisfy him. That is the peace he is disposed to conquer; that is the consummation with which he would stay; that is his notion of state. When that consummation is attained, or when such an approximation to it as he judges to be within his reach, is attained, then, and not till then, he is for conservation;—revolution then is sin; but, till then he will have change and overturning—he will fill the earth with rapine, and fire, and slaughter. But this is just the peace and war principle, which this man, who proposes a durable and solid peace, and the true state, a state constructed with reference to true definitions and axioms,—this is the peace and war principle which the man of science, on scientific grounds, objects to. 'He likes nor peace nor war' on those terms. The conclusions he has framed from those solid premises which he finds in the nature of things, makes him the leader of the opposition in both cases. In one way or another he will make war on that peace; he will kindle the revolutionary fires against that conservation. In one way or another, in one age or another, he will silence that war with all its pomp and circumstance, with all the din of its fifes, and drums, and trumpets. He will make over to the ignominy of ignorant and barbaric ages,—'for we call a nettle but a nettle,' he will turn into a forgotten pageant of the rude, early, instinctive ages, the yet brutal ages of an undeveloped humanity, that triumphant reception at home, of the Conqueror of Foreign States. He will undermine, in all the states, the ethics and religion of brute force, till men shall grow sick, at last, of the old, rusty, bygone trumpery of its insignia, and say, 'Take away those baubles.'

But the hero that we deal with here, is but the pure negation of that heroism which his author conceives of, aspires to, and will have, historical, which he defines as the pattern of man's nature in all men. This one knows no common-wealth; the wealth that is wealth in his eyes, is all his own; the weal that he conceives of, is the weal that is warm at his own heart only. At best he can go out of his particular only as far as the limits of his own hearthstone, or the limits of his clique or caste. And in his selfish passion, when that demands it, he will sacrifice the nearest to him. As to the Commons, they are 'but things to buy and sell with groats,' a herd, a mass, a machine, to be informed with his single will, to be subordinated to his single wishes; in peace enduring the gnawings of hunger, that the garners their toil has filled may overflow for him,—enduring the badges of a degradation which blots out the essential humanity in them, to feed his pride;—in war offered up in droves, to win the garland of the war for him. That is the old hero's commonwealth. His small brain, his brutish head, could conceive no other. The ages in which he ruled the world with his instincts, with his fox-like cunning, with his wolfish fury, with his dog-like ravening,—those brute ages could know no other.

But it is the sturdy European race that the hero has to deal with here; and though, in the moment of victory, it is ready always to chain itself to the conqueror's car, and, in the exultation of conquest, and love for the conqueror, fastens on itself, with joy, the fetters of ages, this quarrel is always breaking out in it anew: it does not like being governed with the edge of the sword;—it is not fond of martial law as a permanent institution.

Two very sagacious tribunes these old Romans happen to have on hand in this emergency: birds considerably too old to be caught with this chaff of victory and military virtue, which puts the populace into such a frenzy, and very learnedly they talk on this subject, with a slight tendency to anachronisms in their mode of expression, in language which sounds a little, at times, as if they might have had access to some more recent documents, than the archives of mythical Rome could just then furnish to them.

But the reader should judge for himself of the correctness of this criticism.

Refusing to join in the military procession on its way to the Capitol, and stopping in the street for a little conference on the subject, when it has gone by, after that vivid complaint of the universal prostration to the military hero already quoted, the conference proceeds thus:—

Sic. On the sudden,
I warrant him consul.

Bru. Then our office may, During his power, go sleep.

Sic. He cannot temperately transport his honours From where he should begin, and end; but will Lose those that he hath won.

Bru. In that there's comfort.

Sic. Doubt not, the commoners, for whom we stand.
But they, upon their ancient malice, will
Forget, with the least cause, these his new honours;
Which that he'll give them, make as little question
As he is proud to do't.

Bru. I heard him swear,
Were he to stand for consul, never would he
Appear i'the market-place, nor on him put
The napless vesture of humility;
Nor, showing (as the manner is) his wounds
To the people, beg their stinking breaths.

Sic. 'Tis right.

Bru. It was his word: O, he would miss it, rather
Than carry it, but by the suit o'the gentry to him,
And the desire of the nobles.

Sic. I wish no better,
Than have him hold that purpose, and to put it
In execution.

Bru. 'Tis most like he will.

Sic. It shall be to him then, as our good wills
A sure destruction.

Bru. So it must fall out
To him, or our authorities. For an end,
We must suggest the people, in what hatred
He still hath held them; that to his power he would
Have made them mules, silenced their pleaders, and
DISPROPERTIED THEIR FREEDOMS: [—note the expression—]
holding them,
IN HUMAN ACTION AND CAPACITY,
Of no more soul nor fitness for THE WORLD
Than CAMELS in their war; who have their provand
Only for bearing burdens, and sore blows
For sinking under them.

Sic. This as you say, suggested
At some time, when his soaring insolence
Shall teach the people (which time shall not want)
If he be put upon't; and that's as easy
As to set dogs on sheep; will be HIS FIRE
To KINDLE THEIR DRY STUBBLE; AND THEIR BLAZE
SHALL DARKEN HIM FOR EVER.

[There is a history in all men's lives,
Figuring the nature of the times deceased,
The which observed a man may prophesy,
With a near aim of the main chance of things,
As yet not come to life, which in their seeds
And weak beginnings, lie intreasured:
Such things become the hatch and brood of time.—Henry IV.]

Coriolanus, elected by the Senate to the consulship, proposes, in his arrogance, as we have already seen, to dispense with the usual form, which he understands to be a form merely, of asking the consent of the people, and exhibiting to them his claim to their suffrages. The tribunes have sternly withstood this proposition, and will hear of 'no jot' of encroachment upon the dignity and state of the Commons. After the flourish with which the election in the Senate Chamber concludes, and the withdrawal of the Senate, again they stop to discuss, confidentially, 'the situation.'

Bru. You see how he intends to use the people.

Sic. May they perceive his intent; he will require them
As if he did contemn what they requested
Should be in their power to give.

Bru. Come, we'll inform them
Of our proceedings here: on the market-place
I know they do attend us.

And to the market-place we go; for it is there that the people are collecting in throngs; no bats or clubs in their hands now, but still full of their passion of gratitude and admiration for the hero's patriotic achievements, against the common foe; and, under the influence of that sentiment, wrought to its highest pitch by that action and reaction which is the incident of the common sentiment in 'the greater congregations,' or 'extensive wholes,' eager to sanction with their 'approbation,' the appointment of the Senate, though the graver sort appear to be, even then, haunted with some unpleasant reminiscences, and not without an occasional misgiving as to the wisdom of the proceeding. There is a little tone of the former meeting lurking here still.

First Cit. Once, if he do require our voices, we ought not to deny him.

Second Cit. We may, Sir, if we will.

Third Cit. We have power in ourselves to do it, but it is a power that we have no power to do. Ingratitude is monstrous: and for the multitude to be ungrateful, were to make a monster of the multitude,—

[There are scientific points here. This term 'monstrosity' is one of the radical terms in the science of nature; but, like many others, it is used in the popular sense, while the sweep and exactitude of the scientific definition, or 'form' is introduced into it.]

—of the which, we, being members, should bring ourselves to be monstrous members.

First Cit. And to make us no better thought of, a little help will serve: for once, when we stood up about the corn, he himself stuck not to call us the many-headed multitude.

Third Cit. We have been called so of many; not that our heads are some brown, some black, some auburn, some bald, but that our wits are so diversely coloured: and truly I think, if ALL our wits were to issue out of ONE skull, they would fly east, west, north, south; and their consent of one direct way should be at once to ALL the points o'the compass.

[An enigma; but the sphinx could propound no better one. Truly this man has had good teaching. He knows how to translate the old priestly Etruscan into the vernacular.]

Second Cit. Think you so? Which way, do you judge, my wit would fly?

Third Cit. Nay, your wit will not so soon out as another man's WILL, 'tis strongly wedged up in a block-head: but if it were at liberty …

Second Cit. You are never without your tricks:—…

Third Cit. Are you all resolved to give your voices? But that's no matter. The greater part carries it. I say, if he would incline to the people, there was never a worthier man.

[Enter Coriolanus and Menenius.]

Here he comes, and in the gown of humility; mark his behaviour. We are not to stay all together, but to come by him where he stands, by ones, by twos, and by threes. He's to make his requests by particulars: wherein every one of us has a single honour, in giving him our own voices with our own tongues: therefore FOLLOW ME, and I'LL DIRECT YOU HOW YOU SHALL GO BY HIM.

[The voice of the true leader is lurking here, and all through these scenes the 'double' meanings are thickly sown.]

All. Content, content!

Men. O Sir, you are not right: have you not known
The worthiest men have done it?

Cor. What must I say?—
I pray, Sir?—Plague upon't! I cannot bring
My tongue to such a pace:—Look, Sir,—my wounds;—
I got them in my country's service, when
Some certain of your brethren roar'd, and ran
From the noise of OUR OWN DRUMS.

Men. O me, the gods!
You must not speak of that; you must desire them
To think upon you.

Cor. Think upon me? Hang 'em!
I would they would forget me, like the virtues
Which our divines lose by them.

Men. You'll mar all;
I'll leave you: Pray you, speak to them, I pray you,
In wholesome manner.

[And now, instead of being thronged with a mob of
citizens—instructed how they are to go by him with the honor of
their single voices they enter 'by twos' and 'threes.']

[Enter two Citizens.]

Cor. Bid them wash their faces,
And keep their teeth clean._—So, here comes a brace,
You know the cause, Sir, of my standing here.

First Cit. We do, Sir; tell us what hath brought you to't,

Cor. Mine own desert.—[The would-be consul answers.]

Second Cit. Your own desert?

Cor. Ay, not Mine own desire.

[His own desert has brought him to the consulship; his own desire would have omitted the conciliation of the people, and the deference to their will, that with all his desert somehow he seems to find expected from him.]

First Cit. How! not your own desire!

Cor. No, Sir. 'Twas never my desire yet, To trouble the poor with begging.

He desires what the poor have to give him however; but he desires to take it, without begging. But it is the heart of the true hero that speaks in earnest through that mockery, and the reference is to a state of things towards which the whole criticism of the play is steadfastly pointed, a state in which sovereigns were reluctantly compelled to beg from the poor, what they would rather have taken without their leave, or, at least, a state in which the form of this begging was still maintained, though there lacked but little to make it a form only, a state of things in which a country gentleman might be called on to sell 'his brass pans' without being supplied, on the part of the State, with what might appear, to him, any respectable reason for it, putting his life in peril, and coming off, with a hair's-breadth escape, of all his future usefulness, if he were bold enough to question the proceeding; a state of things in which a poor law-reader might feel himself called upon to buy a gown for a lady, whose gowns were none of the cheapest, at a time when the state of his finances might render it extremely inconvenient to do so.

But to return to the Roman citizen, for the play is written by one who knows that the human nature is what it is in all ages, or, at least, until it is improved with better arts of culture than the world has yet tried on it.

First Cit. You must think, if we give you anything, We hope to gain by you.

Cor. Well then, I pray, YOUR PRICE O'THE CONSULSHIP?

First Cit. The price is, Sir, to ask it kindly.

Cor. Kindly?
Sir, I pray let me ha't: I have wounds to show you,
Which shall be yours in private.—Your good voice, Sir;
What say you?

Second Cit. You shall have it, worthy Sir.

Cor. A match, Sir: There is in all two worthy voices begg'd:— I have your alms; adieu.

First Cit. But this is something odd.

Second Cit. An 'twere to give again,—But 'tis no matter.

[Exeunt two Citizens.]

[Enter two other Citizens.]

Cor. Pray you now, if it may stand with the tune of your voices, that I may be consul, I have here the customary gown.

Third Cit. You have deserved nobly of your country, and you have not deserved nobly.

Cor. Your enigma?

Third Cit. You have been a scourge to her enemies, you have been a rod to her friends; you have not INDEED, loved the COMMON PEOPLE.

Cor. You should account me the more virtuous, that I have not been common in my love. I will, Sir, flatter my sworn brother the people, to earn a dearer estimation of them; 'tis a condition they account GENTLE: and since the wisdom of their choice is rather to have my hat than my heart, I will practise the insinuating nod, and be off to them most counterfeitly; that is, Sir, I will counterfeit the bewitchment of some popular man, and give it bountifully to the desirers. Therefore, beseech you, I may be consul.

Fourth Cit. We hope to find you our friend; and therefore give you our voices heartily.

Third Cit. You have received many wounds for your country.

Cor. I will not seal your knowledge with showing them. I will make much of your voices, and so trouble you no further.

Both Cit. The gods give you joy, Sir, heartily! [Exeunt.]

Cor. Most sweet voices!— Better it is to die, better to starve, …Rather than fool it so, Let the high office and the honour go To one that would do thus.—I am half through; The one part suffer'd, the other will I do.

[Enter three other Citizens.]

Here come more voices,— Your Voices: for your voices I have fought: Watch'd for your voices; for your voices, bear Of wounds two dozen odd; battles thrice six, I have seen and heard of; for your voices, Done many things, some less, some more: your voices: Indeed, I would be consul.

Fifth Cit. He has done nobly, and cannot go without any honest man's voice.

Sixth Cit. Therefore let him be consul: The gods give him joy, and
make him good friend to the people.

All. Amen, Amen.— God save thee, noble consul! [Exeunt Citizens.]

Cor. WORTHY VOICES!

[Re-enter Menenius, with the tribunes Brutus, and Sicinius.]

Men. You have stood your limitation; and the tribunes Endue you with the people's voice: Remains, That in the official marks invested, you Anon do meet the senate.

Cor. Is this done?

Sic. The custom of request you have discharged: The people do admit you; and are summon'd To meet anon, upon your approbation.

Cor. Where? At the senate-house?

Sic. There Coriolanus.

Cor. May I change these garments?

Sic. You may, Sir.

Cor. That I'll straight do, and knowing myself again, Repair to the senate house.

Men. I'll keep you company.—Will you along.

Bru. We stay here for the people.

Sic. Fare you well.

[Exeunt Coriolanus and Menenius.]

He has it now; and by his looks, methinks,
'Tis warm at his heart.

Bru. With a proud heart he wore
His humble weeds: Will you dismiss the people?

[This is the popular election: but the afterthought, the review, the critical review, is that which must follow, for this is not the same people we had on the stage when the play began. They are the same in person, perhaps; but it is no longer a mob, armed with clubs, clamouring for bread, rushing forth to kill their chiefs, and have corn at their own price. It is a people conscious of their political power and dignity, an organised people; it is a people with a constituted head, capable of instructing them in the doctrine of political duties and rights. It is the tribune now who conducts this review of the Military Hero's civil claims. It is the careful, learned Tribune who initiates, from the heights of his civil wisdom, this great, popular veto, this deliberate 'rejection' of the popular affirmation. For this is what is called, elsewhere, 'a negative instance.']

[Re-enter Citizens.]

Sic. How now, my masters? HAVE YOU CHOSE THIS MAN?

First Cit. He has our voices, Sir.

Bru. We pray the gods he may deserve your loves.

Second Cit. Amen, Sir: To my poor unworthy notice, He mocked us when he begg'd our voices.

Third Cit. Certainly
He flouted us downright.

First Cit. No, 'tis his kind of speech; he did not mock us.

Second Cit. Not one amongst us save yourself, but says, He used us scornfully: he should have show'd us His marks of merit, wounds received for his country.

Sic. Why, so he did, I am sure.

Cit. No; no man saw 'em. [Several speak.]

Third Cit. He said he had wounds which he could show in private;
And with his hat, thus waving it in scorn,
'I would be consul,' says he,' AGED CUSTOM,
BUT BY YOUR VOICES, WILL NOT SO PERMIT ME;
Your voices THEREFORE:' When we granted that,
Here was,—'I thank you for your voices,—thank you,—
Your most sweet voices:—now you have left your voices,
I have no further with you:'—Was not this mockery?

Sic. Why, either, were you ignorant to see't?
Or, seeing it, of such childish friendliness
To yield your voices?

Bru. Could you not have told him As you were lesson'd—when he had no power, But was a petty servant to the state, He was your enemy; ever spake against Your LIBERTIES, and the CHARTERS that you bear I' THE BODY of the WEAL: and now arriving A place of potency, and sway o' the state, If he should still malignantly remain Fast foe to the plebeii, your voices might Be CURSES to YOURSELVES.

Sic. Thus to have said As you were fore-advised, had touched his spirit, And tried his inclination; from him plucked, Either his gracious promise, which you might, As cause had called you up, have HELD HIM TO; Or else it would have galled his surly nature, Which easily endures, not article Tying him to aught;—so putting him to rage, You should have ta'en advantage of his choler, And so left him unelected.

[Somewhat sagacious instructions for these old Roman statesmen to give, and not so very unlike those which English Commons found occasion to put in execution not long after.]

Bru. Did you perceive he did solicit you in free contempt, When he did need your loves; and do you think That his contempt shall not be bruising to you, When, he hath power to crush? Why had your bodies No heart among you, or had you tongues To cry against THE RECTORSHIP of—judgment?

Sic. Have you Ere now, deny'd the asker, and now again, On him that did not ask, but mock, [with a pretence of asking,] bestow Your sued for tongues?

Third Cit. HE'S NOT CONFIRMED, we may deny him YET.

Second Cit. And will deny him:
I'll have five hundred voices of that sound.

First Cit. I, twice five hundred, and their friends to piece 'em.

Bru. Get you hence instantly, and tell those friends, They have chose a consul that will from them Take their liberties, MAKE THEM OF NO MORE VOICE THAN DOGS, that are as often BEAT for barking, As KEPT TO DO SO.

Sic. Let them assemble,
And on a safer judgment, ALL REVOKE
Your IGNORANT ELECTION.

Bru. Lay
A fault on us, your tribunes; that WE LABOURED
NO IMPEDIMENT BETWEEN, but that you must
Cast your election on him.

Sic. Say, you chose him
More after our commandment, than as guided
By your own true affections, and that your minds,
Pre-occupied with what you rather must do,
Than what you should, made you against the grain
To voice him consul: lay the fault on us.

Bru. Ay, SPARE us NOT. Say WE READ LECTURES TO YOU,
How youngly he began to serve his country,
How long continued, and what stock he springs of;
The noble house o' the Marcians, from whence came,
That Ancus Martius, Numa's daughter's son,
Who, after great Hostilius, here was king:
Of the same house Publius and Quintus were,
That our best water brought by conduits hither;
And Censoriuus, darling of the people,
And nobly named so, being censor twice,
Was his great ancestor.

[Of course this man has never meddled with the classics at all. His reading and writing comes by nature.]

Sic. One thus descended, That hath beside well in his person wrought, To be set high in place, we did commend To your remembrances; but you have found, Scaling his present bearing with his past, That he's your fixed enemy, and REVOKE Your sudden approbation.

Bru.. Say you ne'er had done't,— Harp on that still,—but by our putting on, And presently when you have drawn your number, Repair to the Capitol.

Citizens. [Several speak.] We will so. Almost all
Repent in their election. [Exeunt Citizens.]

Bru. Let them go on.
This mutiny were better put in hazard,
Than stay, past doubt, for greater;
If, as his nature is, he fall in rage
With their refusal, both observe and answer
The vantage of his anger.

Sic. To the Capitol:
Come, we'll be there before the stream o' the people,
And this shall seem, as partly'tis, their own
Which WE HAVE GOADED ONWARD.

[See the Play of Henry the Seventh, Founder of the Elizabethan
Tyranny, by the same author.]

We have witnessed the popular election on the scientific boards: we have seen, now, in all its scientific detail, the civil confirmation of the soldier's vote on the battle-field: we have seen it in the senate-chamber and in the market-place, and we saw it in 'the smothered stalls, and bulks, and windows,' and on 'the leads and ridges': we have seen and heard it, not in the shower and thunder that the commons made with their caps and voices only, but in the scarfs, and gloves, and handkerchiefs, which 'the ladies, and maids, and matrons threw.' We have seen each single contribution to this great public act put in by the Poet's selected representative of classes. 'The kitchen malkin, with her richest lockram pinned on her neck, clambering the wall to eye him,' spake for hers; 'the seld-shown flamen, puffing his way to win a vulgar station,' was hastening to record the vote of his; 'the veiled dame, exposing the war of white and damask in her nicely-gawded cheeks to the spoil of Phebus' burning kisses,' was a tribune, too, in this Poet's distribution of the tribes, and spake out for the veiled dames; 'the prattling nurse' who will give her baby that is 'crying itself into a rapture there, while she chats him' her reminiscence of this scene by and by, was there to give the nurses' approbation.

For this is the vote which the great Tribune has to sum up and count, when he comes to review at last, 'in a better hour,' these spontaneous public acts—these momentous acts that seal up the future, and bind the unborn generations of the advancing kind with the cramp of their fetters. Not less careful than this is the analysis when he undertakes to track to its historic source one of those practical axioms, one of those received beliefs, which he finds determining the human conduct, limiting the human history, moulding the characters of men, determining beforehand what they shall be. This is the process when he undertakes, to get one of these rude, instinctive, spontaneous affirmations—one of those idols of the market or of the Tribe—reviewed and criticised by the heads of the Tribe, at least, 'in a better hour,'—criticised and rejected. 'Proceeding by negatives and exclusion first': this is the form in which this Tribune puts on record his scientific veto of that 'ignorant election.'

And in this so carefully selected and condensed combination of historical spectacles—in this so new, this so magnificently illustrated political history—there is another historic moment to be brought out now; and in this same form of 'visible history,' one not less important than those already exhibited.

In the scene that follows, we have, in the Poet's arrangement, the great historic spectacle of a people 'REVOKING THEIR IGNORANT ELECTION,' under the instigation and guidance of those same remarkable leaders, whose voice had been wanting (as they are careful to inform us) till then in the business of the state; leaders who contrive at last to inform the people, in plain terms, that they 'are at point to lose their liberties,' that 'Marcius will have all from them,' and who apologise for their conduct afterwards by saying, that 'he affected one sole throne, without assistance'; for the time had come when the Tribune could repeat the Poet's whisper, 'The one side shall have bale.'

This so critical spectacle is boldly brought out and exhibited here in all its actual historical detail. It is produced by one who is able to include in his dramatic programme the whole sweep of its eventualities, the whole range of its particulars, because he has made himself acquainted with the forces, he has ascended, by scientifically inclusive definition, to the 'powers' that are to be 'operant' in it; and he who has that 'charactery' of nature, may indeed 'lay the future open.' We talk of prophecy; but there is nothing in literature to compare at all with this great specimen of the prophecy of Induction. There is nothing to compare with it in its grasp of particulars, in its comprehension and historic accuracy of detail.

But this great speech, which he entreats for leave to make before that revolutionary movement, which in its weak beginnings in his time lay intreasured, should proceed any further—this preliminary speech, with its so vivid political illustration, is not yet finished. The true doctrine of an instructed scientific election and government, that 'vintage' of politics—that vintage of scientific definitions and axioms which he is getting out of this new kind of history—that new vintage of the higher, subtler fact, which this fine selected, adapted history, will be made to yield, is not yet expressed. The fault with the popular and instinctive mode of inquiry is, he tells us, that it begins with affirmation—but that is the method for gods, and not men—men must begin with negations; they must have tables of review of instances, tables of negation, tables of rejection; and divide nature, not with fire, but with the mind, that divine fire. 'If the mind attempt this affirmation from the first,' he says, 'which it always will when left to itself there will spring up phantoms, mere theories, and ill-defined notions, with axioms requiring daily correction. These will be better or worse, according to the power and strength of the understanding which creates them. But it is only for God to recognise forms affirmatively, at the first glance of contemplation; men can only proceed first by negatives, and then to conclude with affirmatives, after every species of rejection.' And though he himself appears to be profoundly absorbed with the nature of HEAT, at the moment in which he first produces these new scientific instruments, which he calls tables of review, and explains their 'facilities,' he tells us plainly, that they are adapted to other subjects, and that those affirmations which are most essential to the welfare of man, will in due time come off from them, practical axioms on matters of universal and incessant practical concern, that will not want daily correction, that will not want revolutionary correction, to fit them to the exigency.

The question here is not of 'heat,' but of SOVEREIGNTY; it is the question of the consulship, regarded from the ground of the tribuneship. It is not Coriolanus that this tribune is spending so much breath on. The instincts, which unanalytic, barbaric ages, enthrone and mistake for greatness and nobility, are tried and rejected here; and the business of the play is, to get them excluded from the chair of state. The philosopher will have those instincts which men, in their 'particular and private natures,' share with the lower orders of animals, searched out, and put in their place in human affairs, which is not, as he takes it, THE HEAD—the head of the COMMON-weal. It is not Coriolanus; the author has no spite at all against him—he is partial to him, rather; it is not Coriolanus but the instincts that are on trial here, and the man—the so-called man—of instinct, who has no principle of state and sovereignty, no principle of true _man_liness and nobility in his soul; and the trial is not yet completed. The author would be glad to have that revolution which he has inserted in the heart of this play deferred, if that were possible, though he knows that it is not; he thinks it would be a saving of trouble if it could be deferred until some true and scientifically prepared notions, some practical axioms, which would not need in their turn fierce historical correction—revolutionary correction—could be imparted to the common mind.

But we must follow him in this process of division and exclusion a little further, before we come in our plot to the revolution. That revolution which he foresees as imminent and inevitable, he has put on paper here: but there is another lurking within, for which we are not yet ripe. This locked-up tribune will have to get abroad; he will have to get his limits enlarged, and find his way into some new departments, before ever that can begin.

CHAPTER VI.

THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN POLITICS.

'If any man think philosophy and universality to be idle studies, he doth not consider that all professions are from thence served and supplied.'

Advancement of Learning.

'We leave room on every subject for the human or optative part; for it is a part of science to make judicious inquiries and wishes.'

Novum Organum.

As to the method of this new kind of philosophical inquiry, which is brought to bear here so stedfastly upon the most delicate questions, at a time when the Play-house was expressly forbidden by a Royal Ordinance, on pain of dissolution, to touch them—in an age, too, when Parliaments were lectured, and brow-beaten, and rudely sent home, for contumaciously persisting in meddling with questions of state—in an age in which prelates were shrilly interrupted in the pulpit, in the midst of their finest and gravest Sunday discourse, and told, in the presence of their congregations, to hold their tongues and mind their own business, if they chanced to touch upon 'questions of church,' on a day when the Head of the Church herself, in her own sacred person, in her largest ruff, and 'rustling' in her last silk, happened to be in her pew;—as to the method of the philosophical investigations which were conducted under such critical conditions, of course there was no harm in displaying that in the abstract, as a method merely. As a method of philosophical inquiry, there was no harm in presenting it in a tolerably lucid and brilliant manner, accompanying the exhibition with careful, and apparently specific, directions as to the application of it to indifferent subjects. There was no harm, indeed, in blazoning this method a little, and in soliciting the attention of the public, and the attention of mankind in general, to it in a somewhat extraordinary manner, not without some considerable blowing of trumpets. As a method of philosophical inquiry, merely, what earthly harm could it do? Surely there was no more innocent thing in nature than 'your philosophy,' then, so far as any overt acts were concerned; it certainly was the last thing in the world that a king or a queen need trouble their heads about then. Who cared what methods the philosophers were taking, or whether this was a new one or an old one, so that the men of letters could understand it? The modern Solomon was fain to confess that, for his part, he could not—that it was beyond his depth; whereas the history of Henry the Seventh, by the same author, appeared to him extremely clear and lively, and quite within his range, and to that he gave his own personal approbation. The other work, however, as it was making so much noise in the world, and promising to go down to posterity, would serve to adorn his reign, and make it illustrious in future ages.

There was no harm in this philosopher's setting forth his method then, and giving very minute and strict directions in regard to its applications to 'certain subjects.' As to what the Author of it did with it himself—that, of course, was another thing, and nobody's business but his own just then, as it happened.

So totally was the world off its guard at the moment of this great and greatest innovation in its practice—so totally unaccustomed were men then to look for anything like power in the quarter from which this seemed to be proceeding—so impossible was it for this single book to remove that previous impression—that the Author of the Novum Organum could even venture to intersperse these directions, with regard to its specific and particular applications, with pointed and not infrequent allusions to the comprehensive nature—the essentially comprehensive nature—of 'the Machine' whose application to these certain instances he is at such pains to specify; he could, indeed, produce it with a continuous side-long glance at this so portentous quality of it.

Nay, he could go farther than that, and venture to assert openly, over his own name, and leave on record for the benefit of posterity, the assertion that this new method of inquiry does apply, directly and primarily, to those questions in which the human race are primarily concerned; that it strikes at once to the heart of those questions, and was invented to that end.

Such a certificate and warranty of the New Machine was put up by the hands of the Inventor on the face of it, when he dedicated it to the human use—when he appealed in its behalf from the criticism of the times that were near, to those that were far off. Nay, he takes pains to tell us; he tells us in that same moment, what one who studies the NOVUM ORGANUM with the key of 'Times' does not need to be told—can see for himself—that in his description of the method he has already contrived to make the application, the universal practical application.

In his PREROGATIVE INSTANCES, the mind of man is brought out already from its SPECIFIC narrowness, from its own abstract logical conceits and arrogant prenotions, into that collision with fact—the broader fact, the universal fact—and subjected to that discipline from it which is the intention of this logic. It is a 'machine' which is meant to serve to Man as a 'New' Mind—the scientific mind, which is in harmony with nature—a mind informed and enlarged with the universal laws, the laws of KINDS, instead of the spontaneous uninstructed mind, instead of the narrow specific mind of a barbaric race, filled with its own preposterous prenotions and vain conceits, and at war with universal nature; boldly pursuing its deadly feud with that, priding itself on it, making a virtue of it. It is a machine in which those human faculties which are the gifts of God to man, as the instruments of his welfare, are for the first time scientifically conjoined. It is a Machine in which the senses, those hitherto despised instruments in philosophy, by means of a scientific rule and oversight, and with the aid of scientific instruments, are made available for philosophic purposes. It is a Machine in which that organization whereby the universal nature impresses itself on us—reports itself to us—striking its incessant telegraphs on us, whether we read them or not, is for the first time brought to the philosopher's aid; and it is a Machine, also, by which speculation, that hitherto despised instrument in practice, is for the first time, brought to the aid of the man of practice. It is doubly 'New': it is a Machine in which speculation becomes practical—it is a Machine in which practice becomes scientific.

[Fool. Canst thou tell why a man's nose stands in the middle of his face?

Lear. No.

Fool. Why, to keep his eyes on either side of it, that what he cannot smell out, he may spy into.]

In 'THE PREROGATIVE INSTANCES,' the universal matter of fact is already taken up and disposed of in grand masses, under these headships and chief cases, not in a miscellaneous, but scientific manner. The Nature of Things is all there; for this is a Logic which bows the mind of man to the law of the universal nature, and informs and enlarges it with that. It is not a Logic merely in the old sense of that term. The old Logic, and the cobwebs of metaphysics that grew out of it, are the things which this Machine is going to puff away, with the mere whiff and wind of its inroads into nature, and disperse for ever. It is not a logic merely as logic has hitherto been limited, but a philosophy. A logic in which the general 'notions of nature' which are causes, powers, simple powers, elemental powers, true differences, are substituted for those spontaneous, rude, uncorrected, specific notions,—pre-notions of men, which have in that form, as they stand thus, no correlative in nature, and are therefore impotent—not true terms and forms, but air-words, air-lines, merely. It is a logic which includes the Mind of NATURE, and her laws; and not one which is limited to the mind of Man, and so fitted to its incapacity as to nurse him in his natural ignorance, to educate him in his born foolery and conceit, to teach him to ignore by rule, and set at nought the infinite mystery of nature.

The universal history, all of it that the mind of man is constituted to grasp, is here in the general, under these PREROGATIVE INSTANCES, in the luminous order of the Inventor of this science, blazing throughout with his genius, and the mind that has abolished its prenotions, and renounced its rude, instinctive, barbaric tendencies, and has taken this scientific Organum instead; has armed itself with the Nature of Things, and is prepared to grapple with all specifications and particulars.

The author tells us plainly, that those seemingly pedantic arrangements with which he is compelled to perplex his subject in this great work of his, the work in which he openly introduces HIS INNOVATION,—as that—will fall off by and by, when there is no longer any need of them. They are but the natural guards with which great Nature, working in the instinct of the philosophic genius, protects her choicest growth,—the husk of that grain which must have times, and a time to grow in,—the bark which the sap must stop to build, ere its delicate works within are safe. They are like the sheaths with which she hides through frost and wind and shower, until their hour has come, her vernal patterns, her secret toils, her magic cunning, her struggling aspirations, her glorious successes, her celestial triumphs.

In the midst of this studious fog of scholasticism, this complicated network of superficial divisions, the man of humour, who is always not far off and ready to assist in the priestly ministrations as he sees occasion, gently directs our attention to those more simple and natural divisions of the subject, and those more immediately practical terms, which it might be possible to use, under certain circumstances, in speaking of the same subjects, into which, however, these are easily resolvable, as soon as the right point of observation is taken. Through all this haze, he contrives to show us confidentially, the outline of those grand natural divisions, which he has already clearly produced—under their scholastic names, indeed,—in his book of the Advancement of Learning; but which he cannot so openly continue, in a work produced professedly, as a practical instrument fit for application to immediate use, and where the true application is constantly entering the vitals of subjects too delicate to be openly glanced at then.

But he gives us to understand, however, that he has made the application of this method to practice, in a much more specific, detailed manner, in another place, that he has brought it down from those more general forms of the Novum Organum, into 'the nobler' departments, 'the more chosen' departments of that universal field of human practice, which the Novum Organum takes up in its great outline, and boldly and clearly claims in the general, though when it comes to specific applications and particulars, it does so stedfastly strike, or appear to strike, into that one track of practice, which was the only one left open to it then,—which it keeps still as rigidly as if it had no other. He has brought it out, he tells us, from that trunk of 'universality,' and carried it with his own hand into the minutest points and fibres of particulars, those points and fibres, those living articulations in which the grand natural divisions he indicates here, naturally terminate; the divisions which the philosopher who 'makes the Art and Practic part of life, the mistress to his Theoric,' must of course follow. He tells us that he has applied it to PARTICULAR ARTS, to those departments of the human experience and practice in which the need of a rule is most felt, and where things have been suffered to go on hitherto, in a specially miscellaneous manner, and that his axioms of practice in these departments have been so scientifically constructed from particulars, that he thinks they will be apt to know their way to particulars again;—that their specifications are at the same time so comprehensive and so minute, that he considers them fit for immediate use, or at least so far forth fitted, as to require but little skill on the part of the practitioner, to insure them against failure in practice. The process being, of course, in this application to the exigencies of practice, necessarily disentangled from those technicalities and relics of the old wordy scholasticism in which he was compelled to incase and seal up his meanings, in his professedly scientific works, and especially in his professedly practical scientific work.

But these so important applications of his philosophy to practice, of which he issues so fair a prospectus, though he frequently refers to them, could not then be published. The time had not come, and personally, he was obliged to leave, before it came. He was careful, however, to make the best provision which could be made, under such circumstances, for the carrying out of his intentions; for he left a will. These works of practice could not then be published; and if they could have been, there was no public then ready for them. They could not be published; but there was nothing to hinder their being put under cover. There was no difficulty to a man of skill in packing them up in a portable form, under lids and covers of one sort and another, so unexceptionable, that all the world could carry them about, for a century or two, and not perceive that there was any harm in them. Very curiously wrought covers they might be too, with some taste of the wonders of mine art pressing through, a little here and there. They might be put under a very gorgeous and attractive cover in one case, and under a very odd and fantastic one in another; but in such a manner as to command, in both cases, the admiration and wonder of men, so as to pique perpetually their curiosity and provoke inquiry, until the time had come and the key was found.

'Some may raise this question,' he says, talking as he does sometimes in the historical plural of his philosophic chair,—'this question, rather than objection,'—[it was much to be preferred in that form certainly]—'whether we talk of perfecting NATURAL PHILOSOPHY alone, according to our method, or the other sciences such as—ETHICS, LOGIC, POLITICS.' A pretty question to raise just then, truly, though this philosopher sees fit to take it so demurely. 'Whether we talk of perfecting politics with our method,' Elizabethan politics,—and not politics only, but whether we talk of perfecting 'ethics' with it also, and 'logic,—common logic,' which last is as much in need of perfecting as anything, and the beginning of perfecting of that is the reform in the others. 'We certainly intend,'—the emphasis here is on the word 'certainly,' though the reader who has not the key of the times may not perceive it; 'We certainly intend to comprehend them ALL.' For this is the author whose words are most of them emphatic. We must read his sentences more than once to get all the emphasis. We certainly INTEND to comprehend them all. 'We are not vain promisers,' he says, emphasizing that word in another place, and putting this intention into the shape of a promise.

And as common logic which regulates matters by syllogism is applied, not only to natural, but to every other science, so our inductive method likewise, comprehends them all.—Again—[he thinks this bears repeating, repeating in this connection, for now he is measuring the claims of this new method, this new logic, with the claims of that which he finds in possession, regulating matters by syllogism, not producing a very logical result, however:] 'For we form a history, and tables of invention, for ANGER, FEAR, SHAME, and the like,' [that is—we form a history and tables of invention for the passions or affections,] 'and also for EXAMPLES IN CIVIL LIFE, and the MENTAL OPERATIONS … as well as for HEAT, COLD, LIGHT, VEGETATION and THE LIKE,' and he directs us to the Fourth Part of the Instauration, which he reserves for his noblest and more chosen subjects for the confirmation of this assertion.

'But since our method of interpretation, after preparing and arranging a history, does not content itself with examining the opinions and desires of THE MIND—[hear]—like common logic, but also inspects THE NATURE of THINGS, we so regulate the mind that it may be enabled to apply itself, in every respect, correctly to that nature.' Our examples in this part of the work, which is but a small and preparatory part of it, are limited, as you will observe, to heat, cold, light, vegetation, and the like; but this is the explanation of the general intention, which will enable you to disregard that circumstance in your reading of it.—Those examples will serve their purpose with the minds that they detain. They are preparatory, and greatly useful, if you read this new logic from the height of this explanation, you will have a mind, formed by that process, able to apply itself, in every respect, correctly to the subjects omitted here by name, but so clearly claimed, not as the proper subjects only, but as the actual subjects of the new investigation. But lest you should not understand this explanation, he continues—'On this account we deliver necessary and various precepts in our doctrine of interpretation, so that we may apply, in some measure, to the method of discovering the quality and condition of the subject matter of investigation.' And this is the apology for omitting here, or seeming to omit, such sciences as Ethics, Politics, and that science which is alluded to under the name of Common Logic.

This is, indeed, a very instructive paragraph, though it is a gratuitous one for the scholar who has found leisure to read this work with the aid of that doctrine of interpretation referred to, especially if he is already familiar with its particular applications to the noble subjects just specified.

Among the prerogative instances—'suggestive instances' are included—'such as suggest or point out that which is advantageous to mankind; for bare power and knowledge in themselves exalt, rather than enrich, human nature. We shall have a better opportunity of discovering these, when we treat of the application to practice. BESIDES, in the WORK of INTERPRETATION, we LEAVE ROOM ON EVERY SUBJECT for the human or optative part; FOR IT is A PART OF SCIENCE, to make JUDICIOUS INQUIRIES and WISHES.' 'The generally useful instances. They are such as relate to various points, and frequently occur, sparing by that means considerable labour and new trials. The proper place for speaking of instruments, and contrivances, will be that in which we speak of application to practice, and the method of EXPERIMENT. All that has hitherto been ascertained and made use of, WILL BE APPLIED in the PARTICULAR HISTORY of EACH ART.' [We certainly intend to include them ALL, such as Ethics, Politics, and Common Logic.]

'We have now, therefore, exhibited the species, or simple elements of the motions, tendencies, and active powers, which are most universal in nature; and no small portion of NATURAL, that is, UNIVERSAL SCIENCE, has been sketched out. We do not, however, deny that OTHER INSTANCES can, perhaps, be added' (he has confined himself chiefly to the physical agencies under this head, with a sidelong glance at others, now and then), 'and our divisions changed to some more natural order of things [hear], and also reduced to a less number [hear], in which respect we do not allude to any abstract classification, as if one were to say,'—and he quotes here, in this apparently disparaging manner, his own grand, new-coined classification, which he has drawn out with his new method from the heart of nature, and applied to the human,—which he had to go into the universal nature to find, that very classification which he has exhibited abstractly in his Advancement of Learning—abstractly, and, therefore, without coming into any dangerous contact with any one's preconceptions,—'as if one were to say, that bodies desire the preservation, exaltation, propagation, or fruition of their natures; or, that motion tends to the preservation and benefit, either of the UNIVERSE, as in the case of the motions of resistance and connection—those two universal motions and tendencies—or of EXTENSIVE WHOLES, as in the case of those of the greater congregation.' These are phrases which look innocent enough; there is no offensive approximation to particulars here, apparently; what harm can there be in the philosophy of 'extensive wholes,' and 'larger congregations'? Nobody can call that meddling with 'church and state.' Surely one may speak of the nature of things in general, under such general terms as these, without being suspected of an intention to innovate. 'Have you heard the argument?' says the king to Hamlet. 'Is there no offence in it?' 'None in the world.' But the philosopher goes on, and does come occasionally, even here, to words which begin to sound at little suspicious in such connexions, or would, if one did not know how general the intention must be in this application of them. They are abstract terms, and, of course, nobody need see that they are a different kind of abstraction from the old ones, that the grappling-hook on all particulars has been abstracted in them. Suppose one were to say, then, to resume, 'that motion tends to the preservation and benefit, either of the universe, as in the case of the motions of resistance and connection, or of extensive wholes, as in the case of the motions of the greater congregation— [what are these motions, then?]—REVOLUTION and ABHORRENCE of CHANGE, or of particular forms, as in the case of the others.' This looks a little like growing towards a point. We are apt to consider these motions in certain specific forms, as they appear in those extensive wholes and larger congregations, which it is not necessary to name more particularly in this connection, though they are terms of a 'suggestive' character, to borrow the author's own expression, and belong properly to subjects which this author has just included in his system.

But this is none other than his own philosophy which he seems to be criticising, and rating, and rejecting here so scornfully; but if we go on a little further, we shall find what the criticism amounts to, and that it is only the limitation of it to the general statement—that it is the abstract form of it, which he complains of. He wishes to direct our attention to the fact, that he does not consider it good for anything in that general form in which he has put it in his Book of Learning. This is the deficiency which he is always pointing out in that work, because this is the deficiency which it has been his chief labour to supply. Till that defect, that grand defect which his philosophy exhibits, as it stands in his books of abstract science, is supplied—that defect to which, even in these works themselves, he is always directing our attention—he cannot, without self-contradiction, propound his philosophy to the world as a practical one, good for human relief.

In order that it should accomplish the ends to which it is addressed, it is not enough, he tells us in so many words, to exhibit it in the abstract, in general terms, for these are but 'the husks and shells of sciences.' It must be brought down and applied to those artistic reformations which afflicted, oppressed human nature demands—to those artistic constructions to which human nature spontaneously, instinctively tends, and empirically struggles to achieve.

'For although,' he continues,'such remarks—those last quoted—be just, unless they terminate in MATTER AND CONSTRUCTION, according to the TRUE DEFINITIONS, they are SPECULATIVE, and of LITTLE USE.' But in the Novum Organum, those more natural divisions are reduced to a form in which it IS possible to commence practice with them at once, in certain departments, where there is no objection to innovation,—where the proposal for the relief of the human estate is met without opposition,—where the new scientific achievements in the conquest of nature are met with a universal, unanimous human plaudit and gratulation.

'In the meantime,' he continues, after condemning those abstract terms, and declaring, that unless they terminate in matter and construction, according to true definitions, they are speculative, and of little use—'In the meantime, our classification will suffice, and be of much use in the consideration of the PREDOMINANCE of POWERS, and examining the WRESTLING INSTANCES, which constitute our PRESENT SUBJECT.' [The subject that was present then. The question.]

So that the Novum Organum presents itself to us, in these passages, only as a preparation and arming of the mind for a closer dealing with the nature of things, in particular instances, which are not there instanced,—for those more critical 'WRESTLING INSTANCES' which the scientific re-constructions, according to true definitions, in the higher departments of human want will constitute,—those wrestling instances, which will naturally arise whenever the philosophy which concerns itself experimentally with the question of the predominance of powers—the philosophy which includes in its programme the practical application of the principles of revolution and abhorrence of change, in 'greater congregations' and 'extensive wholes,' as well as the principles of motion in 'particular forms'—shall come to be applied to its nobler, to its noblest subjects. That is the philosophy which dismisses its technicalities, which finds such words as these when the question of the predominance of powers, and the question of revolution and abhorrence of change in the greater congregations and extensive wholes, comes to be practically handled. This is the way we philosophise 'when we come to particulars.'

'In a rebellion,
When what's not meet, but what must be, was law,
Then were they chosen. In a better hour,
Let what is meet be said it must be meet,
And throw their power in the dust.'

That is what we should call, in a general way, 'the motion of revolution' in our book of abstractions; this is the moment in which it predominates over 'the abhorrence of change,' if not in the extensive whole—if not in the whole of the greater congregation, in that part of it for whom this one speaks; and this is the critical moment which the man of science makes so much of,—brings out so scientifically, so elaborately in this experiment. But this is a part of science which he is mainly familiar with. Here is a place, for instance, where the motion of particular forms is skilfully brought to the aid of that larger motion. Here we have an experiment in which these petty motives come in to aid the revolutionary movement in the minds of the leaders of it, and with their feather's weight turn the scale, when the abhorrence of change is too nicely balanced with its antagonistic force for a predominance of powers without it.

'But for my single self,
I had as lief not be, as live to be
In awe of such a thing as I myself.
I was born free as Caesar; so were you.

* * * * *

Why man, he doth bestride the narrow world Like a Colossus; and we, petty men, Walk under his huge legs, and peep about To find ourselves dishonorable graves. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings. Brutus and Caesar. What should be in that Caesar? Why should that name be sounded more than yours? Conjure with them; Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Caesar. Now in the name of all the gods at once, Upon what meat doth this our CAESAR feed, That he is grown so great? AGE, thou art shamed: Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods. When went there by an AGE, since the great flood, But it was famed with more than with ONE MAN? When could they say, till now, that talked of Rome, That her wide walls encompassed but One Man? Now is it Rome indeed, and room enough, When there is in it but One Only Man.

* * * * *

What you would work me to, I have some aim;
How I have thought of this, and of these times,
I shall recount hereafter.
Now could I, Casca,
Name to thee a man most like this dreadful night;
That thunders, lightens, opens graves, and roars
As doth the lion in the Capitol,
A man no mightier than thyself, or me,
In PERSONAL ACTION; yet prodigious grown,
And fearful as these strange eruptions are.'
''T is Caesar that you mean: Is it not, Cassius?'
'Let it be—WHO IT is: for Romans now
Have thewes and limbs like to their ancestors.

* * * * *

Poor man, I know he would not be a wolf, But that he sees the Romans are but sheep. He were no lion, were not Romans hinds. Those that with haste will make a mighty fire, Begin it with—WEAK STRAWS. What trash is—Rome What rubbish, and what offal, when it serves for the base matter to illuminate So vile a thing as—Caesar. But— I perhaps speak this Before a willing bondman.

And here is another case where the question of the predominance of powers arises. In this instance, it is the question of British freedom that comes up; and the tribute—not the tax—that a Caesar—the first Caesar himself, had exacted, is refused 'in a better hour,' by a people kindling with ancestral recollections, throwing themselves upon their ancient rights, and 'the natural bravery of their isle,' and ready to re-assert their ancient liberties.

The Ambassador of Augustus makes his master's complaint at the British Court. The answer of the State runs thus, king, queen and prince taking part in it, as the Poet's convenience seems to require.

'This tribute,' complains the Roman; 'by thee, lately, is left untendered.'

Queen. And, to kill the marvel,
Shall be so ever.

Prince Cloten. There be many Caesars, Ere such another Julius. Britain is A world by itself; and we will nothing pay, For wearing our own noses. [General principles.]

Queen. That opportunity Which then they had to take from us, to resume We have again. Remember, sir, my liege,

[It is the people who are represented here by Cymbeline.]

The kings your ancestors; together with
The natural bravery of your isle; which stands
As Neptune's park, ribbed and paled in
With rocks unscaleable, and roaring waters;
With sands, that will not bear your enemies' boats,
But suck them up to the top-mast.

* * * * *

Cloten. Come, there's no more tribute to be paid: Our kingdom is stronger than it was at that time; and, as I said, there is no more such Caesars: other of them may have crooked noses; but, to owe such straight arms, none.

Cymbeline. Son, let your mother end.

Cloten. We have yet many among us can gripe as hard as Cassibelan: I do not say, I am one; but I have a hand.—Why tribute? Why should we pay tribute? If Caesar can hide the sun from us with a blanket, or put the moon in his pocket, we will pay him tribute for light; else, Sir, no more tribute, pray you now.

Cymbeline. You must know, Till the injurious Romans did extort This tribute from us, we were free: Caesar's ambition …. against all colour, here Did put the yoke upon us; which to shake off, Becomes a warlike people, whom we reckon Ourselves to be. We do say then to Caesar, Our ancestor was that Mulmutius, which Ordained OUR LAWS, whose use THE SWORD OF CAESAR Hath too much mangled; whose REPAIR and FRANCHISE, Shall, by the power we hold, be our good deed. Mulmutius made our laws, Who was the first of BRITAIN which did put His brows within a golden crown, and called Himself a KING.

That is the tune when the Caesar comes this way, to a people who have such an ancestor to refer to; no matter what costume he comes in. This is Caesar in Britain; and though Prince Cloten appears to incline naturally to prose, as the medium best adapted to the expression of his views, the blank verse of Cymbeline is as good as that of Brutus and Cassius, and seems to run in their vein very much.

It is in some such terms as these that we handle those universal motions on whose balance the welfare of the world depends—'the motions of resistance and connection,' as the Elizabethan philosopher, with a broader grasp than the Newtonian, calls them—when we come to the diagrams which represent particulars. This is the kind of language which this author adopts when he comes to the modifications of those motions which are incident to extensive wholes in the case of the greater congregations; that is, 'revolution' and 'abhorrence of change,' and to those which belong to particular forms also. For it is the science of life; and when the universal science touches the human life, it will have nothing less vivacious than this. It will have the particular of life here also. It will not have abstract revolutionists, any more than it will have abstract butterflies, or bivalves, or univalves. This is the kind of 'loud' talk that one is apt to hear in this man's school; and the clash and clang that this very play now under review is full of, is just the noise that is sure to come out of his laboratory, whenever he gets upon one of these experiments in 'extensive wholes,' which he is so fond of trying. It is the noise that one always hears on his stage, whenever the question of 'particular forms' and predominance of powers comes to be put experimentally, at least, in this class of 'wrestling instances.'

For we have here a form of composition in which that more simple and natural order above referred to is adopted—where those clear scientific classifications, which this author himself plainly exhibits in another scientific work, though he disguises them in the Novum Organum, are again brought out, no longer in the abstract, but grappling the matter; where, instead of the scientific technicalities just quoted—instead of those abstract terms, such as 'extensive wholes,' 'greater congregation,' 'fruition of their natures,' and the like—we have terms not less scientific, the equivalents of these, but more living—words ringing with the detail of life in its scientific condensations—reddening with the glow, or whitening with the calm, of its ideal intensities—pursuing it everywhere—everywhere, to the last height of its poetic fervors and exaltations.

And it is because this so vivid popular science has its issue from this 'source'—it is because it proceeds from this scientific centre, on the scientific radii, through all the divergencies and refrangibilities of the universal beam—it is because all this inexhaustible multiplicity and variety of particulars is threaded with the fibre of the universal science—it is because all these thick-flowering imaginations, these 'mellow hangings,' are hung upon the stems and branches that unite in the trunk of the prima philosophia—it is because of this that men find it so prophetic, so inclusive, so magical; this is the reason they find all in it. 'I have either told, or designed to tell, all,' says the expositor of these plays. 'What I cannot speak, I point out with my finger.' For all the building of this genius is a building on that scientific ground-plan he has left us; and that is a plan which includes all the human field. It is the plan of the Great Instauration.

CHAPTER VII.

VOLUMNIA AND HER BOY.

'My boy Marcius approaches.'

'Why should I war without the walls of Troy,
That find such cruel battle here within?
Each Trojan that is master of his heart,
Let him to field.'

Is not the ground which Machiavel wisely and largely discourseth concerning governments, that the way to establish and preserve them, is to reduce them ad principia; a rule in religion and nature, as well as in civil administration? [Again.] Was not the Persian magic a reduction or correspondence of the principles and architectures of nature to the rules and policy of governments?'—['Questions to be asked.']—Advancement of Learning.

It is by means of this popular rejection of the Hero's claims, which the tribunes succeed in procuring, that the Poet is enabled to complete his exhibition and test of the virtue which he finds in his time 'chiefest among men, and that which most dignifies the haver'; the virtue which he finds in his time rewarded with patents of nobility, with patrician trust, with priestly authority, with immortal fame, and thrones and dominions, with the disposal of the human welfare, and the entail of it to the crack of doom—no matter what 'goslings' the law of entail may devolve it on.

He makes use of this incident to complete that separation he is effecting in the hitherto unanalysed, ill-defined, popular notions, and received and unquestioned axioms of practice—that separation of the instinctive military heroism, and the principle of the so-called heroic greatness, from the true principles of heroism and nobility, the true principle of subjection and sovereignty in the individual human nature and in the common-weal.

That martial virtue has been under criticism and suspicion torn the beginning of this action. It was shown from the first—from that ground and point of observation which the sufferings of the diseased common-weal made for it—in no favourable light. It was branded in the first scene, in the person of its Hero, as 'a dog to the commonalty.' It is one of the wretched 'commons' who invents, in his distress, that title for it; but the Poet himself exhibits it, not descriptively only, but dramatically, as something more brutish than that—eating the poor man's corn that the gods have sent him, and gnawing his vitals, devouring him soul and body, 'tooth and fell.' It was shown up from the first as an instinct that men share with 'rats'. It was brought out from the first, and exhibited with its teeth in the heart of the common-weal. The Play begins with a cross-questioning in the civil streets, of that sentiment which the hasty affirmations of men enthrone. It was brought out from the first—it came tramping on in the first act, in the first scene—with its sneer at the commons' distress, longing to make 'a quarry of the quartered slaves, as high' as the plumed hero of it 'could prick his lance'; and that, too, because they rebelled at famine, as slaves will do sometimes, when the common notion of hunger is permitted to instruct them in the principle of new unions; when that so impressive, and urgent, and unappeasable teacher comes down to them from the Capitol, and is permitted by their rulers to induct them experimentally into the doctrine of 'extensive wholes,' and 'larger congregations,' and 'the predominance of powers.' And it so happened, that the threat above quoted was precisely the threat which the founder of the reigning house had been able to carry into effect here a hundred years before, in putting down an insurrection of that kind, as this author chanced to be the man to know.

But the cry of the enemy is heard without; and this same principle, which shows itself in such questionable proofs of love at home, becomes with the change of circumstances—patriotism. But the Poet does not lose sight of its identity under this change. This love, that looks so like hatred in the Roman streets, that sniffs there so haughtily at questions about corn, and the price of 'coals,' and the price of labour, while it loves Rome so madly at the Volscian gates—this love, that sneers at the hunger and misery of the commons at home, while it makes such frantic demonstrations against the common enemy abroad, appears to him to be a very questionable kind of love, to say the least of it.

In that fine, conspicuous specimen of this quality, which the hero of his story offers him—this quality which the hostilities of nations deify—he undertakes to sift it a little. While in the name of that virtue which has at least the merit of comprehending and conserving a larger unity, a more extensive whole, than the limit of one's own personality, 'it runs reeking o'er the lives of men, as 'twere a perpetual spoil'; while under cover of that name which in barbaric ages limits human virtue, and puts down upon the map the outline of it—the bound which human greatness and virtue is required to come out to; while in the name of country it shows itself 'from face to foot a thing of blood, whose every motion is timed with dying cries,' undaunted by the tragic sublimities of the scene, this Poet confronts it, and boldly identifies it as that same principle of state and nobility which he has already exhibited at home.

That sanguinary passion which the heat of conflict provokes is but the incident; it is the principle of acquisition, it is the natural principle of absorption, it is the instinct that nature is full of, that nature is alive with; but the one that she is at war with, too—at war with in the parts—one that she is forever opposed to, and conquering in the members, with her mathematical axioms—with her law of the whole, of 'the worthier whole,' of 'the greater congregation'; it is that principle of acquisition which it is the business of the state to set bounds to in the human constitution—which gets branded with other names, very vulgar ones, too, when the faculty of grasp and absorption is smaller. That, and none other, is the principle which predominates, and is set at large here. The leashed 'dog' of the commonalty at home, is let slip here in the conquered town. The teeth that preyed on the Roman weal there, have elongated and grown wolfish on the Volscian fields. The consummation of the captor's deeds in the captured city—those matchless deeds of valor—the consummation for Coriolanus in Corioli, for 'the conqueror in the conquest,' is—'NOW ALL'S HIS.' And the story of the battle without is—'He never stopped to ease his breast with panting, till he could call both field and city—OURS.'

The Poet sets down nought in malice, but he will have the secret of this LOVE, he will have the heart out of it—this love that stops so short with geographic limits,—that changes with the crossing of a line into a demon from the lowest pit.

But it is a fair and noble specimen, it is a highly-qualified, 'illustrious instance,' of this instinctive heroic virtue, he has seized on here, and made ready now for his experiment; and even when he brings him in, reeking from the fresh battlefield, with the blood undried on his brow, rejoicing in his harvest, even amid the horrors of the conquered town, this Poet, with his own ineffable and matchless grace of moderation, will have us pause and listen while his Coriolanus, ere he will take food or wine in his Corioli, gives orders that the Volscian who was kind to him personally—the poor man at whose house he lay—shall be saved, when he is so weary with slaying Volscians that 'his very memory is tired,' and he cannot speak his poor friend's name.

He tracks this conqueror home again, and he watches him more sharply than ever—this man, whose new name is borrowed from his taken town. CORIOLANUS of CORIOLI. Marcius, plain Caius Marcius, now no more. He will think it treason—even in the conquered city he will resent it—if any presume to call him by that petty name henceforth, or forget for a breathing space to include in his identity the town—the town, that in its sacked and plundered streets, and dying cries—that, with that 'painting' which he took from it so lavishly, though he scorned the soldiers who took 'spoons'—has clothed him with his purple honours: those honours which this Poet will not let him wear any longer, tracked in the misty outline of the past, or in the misty complexity of the unanalysed conceptions of the vulgar, the fatal unscientific opinion of the many-headed many; that old coat of arms, which the man of science will trace now anew (and not here only) with his new historic pencil, which he will fill now anew—not here only—which he will fill on another page also, 'approaching his particular more near'—with all its fresh, recent historic detail, with all its hideous, barbaric detail.

He is jealous,—this new Poet of his kind,—he is jealous of this love that makes such work in Volscian homes, in Volscian mother's sons, under this name, 'that men sanctify, and turn up the white of the eyes to.' He flings out suspicions on the way home, that it is even narrower than it claims to be: he is in the city before it; he contrives to jet a jar into the sound of the trumpets that announce its triumphant entry; he has thrown over all the glory of its entering pageant, the suspicion that it is base and mercenary, that it is base and avaricious, though it puts nothing in its pocket, but takes its hire on its brows.

Menenius. Brings a victory in his pocket. Volumnia. On's brows Menenius.

He surprises the mother counting up the cicatrices. He arrests the cavalcade on its way to the Capitol, and bids us note, in those private whispers of family confidence, how the Camp and the Capitol stand in this hero's chart, put down on the road to 'our own house.' Nay, he will bring out the haughty chieftain in person, and show him on his stage, standing in his 'wolfish gown,' showing the scars that he should hide, and asking, like a mendicant, for his hire. And though he does it proudly enough, and as if he did not care for this return, though he sets down his own services, and expects the people to set them down, to a disinterested love for his country, it is to this Poet's purpose to show that he was mistaken as to that. It is to his purpose to show that these two so different things which he finds confounded under one name and notion in the popular understanding here, and, what is worst of all, in the practical understanding of the populace, are two, and not one. That the mark of the primal differences, the original differences, the difference of things, the simplicity of nature herself divides them, makes two of them, two,—not one. He has caught one of those rude, vulgar notions here, which he speaks of elsewhere so often, those notions which make such mischief in the human life, and he is severely separating it—he is separating the martial virtue—from the true heroism, 'with the mind, that divine fire.' He is separating this kind of heroism from that cover under which it insinuates itself into governments, with which it makes its most bewildering claim to the popular approbation.

He is bound to show that the true love of the common-weal, that principle which recognises and embraces the weal of others as its own, that principle which enters into and constitutes each man's own noblest life, is a thing of another growth and essence, a thing which needs a different culture from any that the Roman Volumnia could give it, a culture which unalytic, barbaric ages—wanting in all the scientific arts—could not give it.

He will show, in a conspicuous instance, what that kind of patriotism amounts to, in the man who aspires to 'the helm o' the State,' while there is yet no state within himself, while the mere instincts of the lower nature have, in their turn, the sway and sovereignty in him. He will show what that patriotism amounts to in one so schooled, when the hire it asks so disdainfully is withheld. And he will bring out this point too, as he brings out all the rest, in that large, scenic, theatric, illuminated lettering, which this popular design requires, and which his myth furnishes him, ready to his hand. He will have his 'transient hieroglyphics,' his tableaux vivants, his 'dumb-shows' to aid him here also, because this, too, is for the spectators—this, too, is for the audience whose eyes are more learned than their ears.

It is a natural hero, one who achieves his greatness, and not one who is merely born great, whom the Poet deals with here. 'He has that in his face which men love—authority.' 'As waves before a vessel under sail, so men obey him and fall below his stern.' The Romans have stripped off his wings and turned him out of the city gates, but the heroic instinct of greatness and generalship is not thus defeated. He carries with him that which will collect new armies, and make him their victorious leader. Availing himself of the pride and hostility of nations, he is sure of a captaincy. His occupation is not gone so long as the unscientific ages last. The principle of his heroism and nobility has only been developed in new force by this opposition. He will have a new degree; he will purchase a new patent of it; he will forge himself a new and better name, for 'the patricians are called good citizens.' He will forget Corioli; Coriolanus now no more, he will conquer Rome, and incorporate that henceforth in his name. He will make himself great, not by the grandeur of a true citizenship and membership of the larger whole, in his private subjection to it,—not by emerging from his particular into the self that comprehends the whole; he will make himself great by subduing the whole to his particular, the greater to the less, the whole to the part. He will triumph over the Common-weal, and bind his brow with a new garland. That is his magnanimity. He will take it from without, if they will not let him have it within. He will turn against that country, which he loved so dearly, that same edge which the Volscian hearts have felt so long. 'There's some among you have beheld me fighting,' he says. 'Come, try upon yourselves what you have seen me?' He is only that same narrow, petty, pitiful private man he always was, in the city, and in the field, at the head of the Roman legions, and in the legislator's chair, when, to right his single wrong, or because the people would not let him have all from them, he comes upon the stage at last with Volscian steel, and sits down, Captain of the Volscian armies, at Rome's gates.

'This morning,' says Menenius, after the reprieve, 'this morning for ten thousand of your throats, I'd not have given a doit.' But this is only the same 'good citizen' we saw in the first scene, who longed to make a quarry of thousands of the quartered slaves, as high as he could prick his lance! That was 'the altitude of his virtue' then. It is the same citizenship with its conditions altered.

So well and thoroughly has the philosopher done his work throughout—so completely has he filled the Roman story with his 'richer and bolder meanings,' that when the old, familiar scene, which makes the denouement of the Roman myth, comes out at last in the representation, it comes as the crowning point of this Poet's own invention. It is but the felicitous artistic consummation of the piece, when this hero, in his conflicting passions and instincts, gives at last, to one private affection and impulse, the State he would have sacrificed to another; when he gives to his boy's prattling inanities, to his wife's silence, to the moisture in her eyes, to a shade less on her cheek, to the loss of a line there, to his mother's scolding eloquence, and her imperious commands, the great city of the gods, the city he would have offered up, with all its sanctities, with all its household shrines and solemn temples, as one reeking, smoking holocaust, to his wounded honour. That is the principle of the citizenship that was 'accounted GOOD' when this play began, when this play was written.

'He was a kind of nothing, titleless,— Till he had forged himself a name i' the fire Of burning Rome.'

That is his modest answer to the military friend who entreats him to spare the city.

'Though soft-conscienced men may be content to say it was for his country, he did it to please his mother, and to be partly proud.'

Surely that starving citizen who found himself at the beginning of this play, 'as lean as a rake' with this hero's legislation, and in danger of more fatal evils, was not so very wide of the truth, after all, in his surmise as to the principles of the heroic statesmanship and warfare, when he ventured thus early on that suggestion. The State banished him, as an enemy, and he came back with a Volscian army to make good that verdict. But his sword without was not more cruel than his law had been within. It was not starving only that he had voted for. 'Let them hang,' ay—(ay) 'and BURN TOO,' was 'the disposition' they had 'thwarted',—measuring 'the quarry of the quartered slaves,' which it would make, 'would the nobility but lay aside their ruth.' That was the disposition, that was the ignorance, the blind, brutish, demon ignorance, that 'in good time' they had thwarted. They had ruled it out and banished it from their city on pain of death, forever; they had turned it out in its single impotence, and it came back 'armed;' for this was one of rude nature's monarchs, and outstretched heroes.

Yet is he conquered and defeated. The enemy which has made war without so long, which has put Corioli and Rome in such confusion, has its warfare within also, and it is there that the hero is beaten and slain. For there is no state or fixed sovereignty in his soul. Both sides of the city rise at once; there is a fearful battle, and the red-eyed Mars is dethroned. The end which he has pursued at such a cost is within his reach at last; but he cannot grasp it. The city lies there before him, and his dragon wings encircle it; there is steel enough in the claws and teeth now, but he cannot take it. For there is no law and no justice of the peace, and no general within to put down the conflict of changeful, warring selfs, to suppress the mutiny of mutually opposing, mutually annihilating selfish dictates.

In vain he seeks to make his will immutable; for the single passion has its hour, this 'would-do' changes. With the impression the passion changes, and the purpose that is passionate must alter with it, unless pure obstinacy remain in its place, and fulfil the annulled dictate. For such purpose, one person of the scientific drama tells us—one who had had some dramatic experience in it,—

'is but the slave to memory, Of violent birth, and poor validity, Which now, like fruit unripe, stick on the tree, But fall unshaken when they mellow be. What to ourselves in passion we propose, The passion ending doth the purpose lose.'

That is Hamlet's verbal account of it, when he undertakes to reduce his philosophy to rhyme, and gets the player to insert some sixteen of his lines quietly into the court performance: that is his verbal account of it; but his action, too, speaks louder and more eloquently than his words.

The principle of identity and the true self is wanting in this so-called self-ishness. For the true principle of self is the peace principle, the principle of state within and without.

'To thine own self be true, And it must follow as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man'

That is the doctrine, the scientific doctrine. But it is not the passionate, but thoughtful Hamlet, shrinking from blood, with his resolution sicklied o'er with the pale cast of conscientious thought; it is not the humane, conscience-fettered Hamlet, but the man who aspires to make his single humours the law of the universal world, in whom the poet will show now this want of state and sovereignty.

He steels himself against Cominius; he steels himself against Menenius. 'He sits in gold,' Cominius reports, 'his eye red as 'twould burn Rome'—a small flambeau the poet thinks for so large a city. 'He no more remembers his mother than an eight year old horse,' is the poor old Menenius querulous account of him, when with a cracked heart he returns and reports how the conditions of a man are altered in him: but while he is making that already-quoted report of this superhuman growth and assumption of a divine authority and honour in the Military Chieftain, the Poet is quietly starting a little piece of philosophical machinery that will shake out that imperial pageant, and show the slave that is hidden under it, for it is no man at all, but, in very deed, a slave, as Hamlet calls it, 'passion's slave,' 'a pipe for fortune's finger to sound what stop she please.' For that state,—that command—depends on that which 'changes,'— fortuities, impressions, nay, it has the principle of revolution within it. It is its nature to change. The single passion cannot engross the large, many-passioned, complex nature, so rich and various in motivity, so large and comprehensive in its surveys—the single passion seeks in vain to subdue it to its single end. That reigning passion must give way when it is spent, or sooner if its master come. You cannot make it look to-day as it looked yesterday; you cannot make it look when its rival affection enters as it looked when it reigned alone. An hour ago, the hue of resolution on its cheek glowed immortal red. It was strong enough to defy God and all his creatures; it would annul all worlds but that one which it was god of.

This is the speech of it on the lips of the actor who comes in to interpret to us the thinker's inaction, the thinker's irresolution, for 'it is conscience that makes cowards of us all.' Here is a man who is resolute enough. His will is not 'puzzled.' His thoughts, his scruples will not divide and destroy his purpose. Here is THE UNITY which precedes ACTION. This man is going to be revenged for his father. 'What would you undertake to do?' 'To cut his throat i' the church.'

'To hell allegiance, vows to the blackest devil.
Conscience and grace to the profoundest pit.
I dare damnation. To this point I stand
That both the worlds I give to negligence,
Let come what comes, only I'll be revenged
Most thoroughly for my father.' [Only.]

That is your passionate speech, your speech of fire. That was what the principle of vindictiveness said when it was you, when it mastered you, and called itself by your name. Ay, it has many names, and many lips; but it is always one. That was what it said an hour ago; and now it is shrunk away you know not where, you cannot rally it, and you are there confounded, self-abandoned, self-annulled, a forgery, belying the identity which your visible form—which your human form, was made to promise,—a slave,—a pipe for fortune's finger. This is the kind of action which is criticised in the scientific drama, and 'rejected'; and the conclusion after these reviews and rejections, 'after every species of rejection,'—the affirmation is, that there is but one principle that is human, and that is GOOD yesterday, to-day, and for ever; and whose is true to that is true, in the human form, to the self which was, and will be. He cannot then be false to his yesterday, or tomorrow; he cannot then be false to himself; he cannot then be false to any man; for that is the self that is one in us all—that is the self of reason and conscience, not passion.

But as for this affection that is tried here now, that the diagram of this scene exhibits so tangibly, 'as it were, to the eye,'—this poor and private passion, that sits here, with its imperial crown on its head, in the place of God, but lacking His 'mercy,'—this passion of the petty man, that has made itself so hugely visible with its monstrous outstretching, that lies stretched out and glittering on these hills, with its dragon coils unwound, with its deadly fangs—those little fangs, that crush our private hearts, and torture and rend our daily lives—exposed in this great solar microscope, striking the common-weal,—as for this petty, usurping passion, there is a spectacle approaching that will undo it.

Out of that great city there comes a little group of forms, which yesterday this hero 'could not stay to pick out of that pile which had offended him,' that was his word,—which yesterday he would have burnt in it without a scruple. Towards the great Volscian army that beleaguers Rome it comes—towards the pavilion where the Volscian captain sits in gold, with his wings outspread, it shapes its course. To other eyes, it is but a group of Roman ladies, two or three, clad in mourning, with their attendants, and a prattling child with them; but, with the first glance at it from afar, the great chieftain trembles, and begins to clasp his armour. He could think of them and doom them, in his over-mastering passion of revenge, with its heroic infinity of mastery triumphant in him,—he could think of them and doom them; but the impressions of the senses are more vivid, and the passions wait on them. As that group draws nearer, one sees, by the light of this Poet's painting, a fair young matron, with subdued mien and modest graces, and an elder one, leading a wilful boy, with a 'confirmed countenance,' pattering by her side; just such a group as one might see anywhere in the lordly streets of Palatinus,—much such a one as one might find anywhere under those thousand-doomed plebeian roofs.

But to this usurping 'private,' to this man of passion and affection, and not reason—this man of private and particular motives only, and blind partial aims, it is more potent than Rome and all her claims; it outweighs Rome and all her weal—'it is worth of senators and patricians a city full, of tribunes and plebeians a sea and land full'—it outweighs all the Volscians, and their trust in him.

His reasons of state begin to falter, and change their aspects, as that little party draws nearer; and he finds himself within its magnetic sphere.

For this is the pattern-man, for the man of mere impression and instinct. He is full of feeling within his sphere, though it is a sphere which does not embrace plebeians,—which crushes Volscians with clarions, and drums, and trumpets, and poets' voices to utter its exultations. Within that private sphere, his sensibilities are exquisite and poetic in their depth and delicacy. He is not wanting in the finer impulses, in the nobler affections of the particular and private nature. He is not a base, brutal man. Even in his martial conquests, he will not take 'leaden spoons.' His soul is with a divine ambition fired to have all. It is instinct, but it is the instinct of the human; it is 'conservation with advancement' that he is blindly pursuing, for this is a generous nature. He knows the heights that reason lends to instinct in the human kind, and the infinities that affection borrows from it.

And the Poet himself has large and gentle views of 'this particular,' scientific views of it, scientific recognitions of its laws, such as no philosophic school was ever before able to pronounce. Even here, on this sad and tragic ground of a subdued and debased common-weal, he will not cramp its utterance—he will give it leave to speak, in all its tenderness and beauty, in its own sweet native dialect, all its poetic wildness, its mad verities, its sober impossibilities, even at the moment in which he asks in statesmanship for the rational motive, undrenched in humours and affections—for the motive of the weal that is common, and not for the motive of that which is private and exclusive.

In vain the hero struggles with his yielding passion, and seeks to retain it. In vain he struggles with a sentiment which he himself describes as 'a gosling's instinct,' and seeks to subdue it. In vain he rallies his pride, and says, 'Let it be virtuous to be obstinate'; and determines to stand 'as if a man were author of himself, and knew no other kin.' His mother kneels. It is but a frail, aged woman kneeling to the victorious chieftain of the Volscian hosts; but to him it is 'as if Olympus to a mole-hill stooped in supplication.' His boy looks at him with an eye in which great Nature speaks, and says, 'Deny not'; he sees the tears in the dove's eyes of the beloved, he hears her dewy voice; we hear it, too, through the Poet's art, in the words she speaks; and he forgets his part. We reach the 'grub' once more. The dragon wings of armies melt from him. He is his young boy's father—he is his fair young wife's beloved.

'O a kiss, long as my exile, sweet as my revenge.'

There's no decision yet. The scales are even now. But there is another there, waiting to be saluted, and he himself is but a boy—his own mother's boy again, at her feet. It is she that schools and lessons him; it is she that conquers him. It was 'her boy,' after all—it was her boy still, that was 'coming home.'

Well might Menenius say—

'This Volumnia is worth of consuls, senators, patricians, A city full; of tribunes such as you, A sea and land full.'

But let us take the philosophic report of this experiment as we find it; for on the carefullest study, when once it is put in its connections, when once we 'have heard the argument,' we shall not find anything in it to spare. But we must not forget that this is still 'the election,' the ignorant election of the common-weal which is under criticism, and though this election has been revoked in the play already, and this is a banished man we are trying here, there was a play in progress when this play was played, in which that revocation was yet to come off; and this Poet was anxious that the subject should be considered first from the most comprehensive grounds, so that the principle of 'the election' need never again be called in question, so that the revolution should end in the state, and not in the principle of revolution.

'My wife comes foremost; then the honoured mould
Wherein this trunk was framed, and in her hand
The grand-child to her blood. But, out, affection!
All bond and privilege of nature, break!
Let it be virtuous to be obstinate.—
What is that curtsey worth? or those doves' eyes,
Which can make gods forsworn?

['He speaks of the people as if he were a god to punish, and not a man of infirmity.']

'I melt, and am not
Of STRONGER EARTH than others.—My mother bows;
As if Olympus to a molehill should
In supplication nod: and my young boy
Hath an aspect of intercession, which
Great Nature cries, 'Deny not!'—Let the Volsces
Plough Rome, and harrow Italy; I'll never
Be such a GOSLING to obey INSTINCT; but stand,
As if a MAN were author of himself,
And knew no other kin.
These eyes are not the same I wore in Rome.

Vir.
The sorrow that delivers us thus changed,
Makes you think so.

[The objects are altered, not the eyes. We are changed. But it is with sorrow. She bids him note that alteration, and puts upon it the blame of his loss of love. But that is just the kind of battery he is not provided for. His resolution wavers. That unrelenting warrior, that fierce revengeful man is gone already, and forgot to leave his part—the words he was to speak are wanting.]

Cor. Like a dull actor now,
I have forgot my part, and I am out,
Even to a full disgrace. Best of my flesh,
Forgive my tyranny; but do not say,
For that, Forgive our Romans.—O, a kiss
Long as my exile, sweet as my revenge!
Now by the jealous queen of heaven, that kiss
I carried from thee, dear; and my true lip
Hath virgin'd it e'er since.—You gods! I prate,
And the most noble mother of the world
Leave unsaluted: Sink, my knee, t'the earth; [Kneels.]
Of the deep duty more impression show
Than that of common sons.

Vol. O, stand up bless'd! Whilst, with no softer cushion than the flint, I kneel before thee; and unproperly Show duty, as mistaken—

[Note it—'as mistaken,' for this is the kind of learning described elsewhere, which differs from received opinions, and must, therefore, pray in aid of similes.]

—and improperly
Show DUTY, as mistaken all the while
Between the child and parent.

[And the prostrate form of that which should command, is represented in the kneeling mother. The Poet himself points us to this hieroglyphic. It is the common-weal that kneels in her person, and the rebel interprets for us. It is the violated law that stoops for pardon.]

Cor. What is this? Your knees to me? to your corrected son? Then let the pebbles on the hungry beach Fillip the stars; then let the mutinous winds Strike the proud cedars 'gainst the fiery sun; Murdering impossibility, to make What cannot be, slight work.

Vol. Thou art my warrior; I holp to frame thee.

[But it is not of the little Marcius only, the hero—the Roman hero in germ—that she speaks—there is more than her Roman part here, when she adds—]

Vol. This is a poor epitome of yours,
Which by the interpretation of full time
May show, like all, yourself.

[And hear now what benediction the true hero can dare to utter, what prayer the true hero can dare to pray, through this faltering, fluctuating, martial hero's lips, when, 'that whatsoever god who led him' is failing him, and the flaws of impulse are swaying him to and fro, and darkening him for ever.]

Cor. 'The god of soldiers
With the consent of SUPREME JOVE,'—[the Capitolian, the
god of state]—'inform
Thy thoughts with NOBLENESS;'—[inform thy thoughts.]
'that thou may'st prove
The shame unvulnerable, and stick i'the wars
Like a great sea-mark, standing every flaw,
And saving those that eye thee.'

[But this hero's conclusion for himself, and his impulsive nature is—]

'Not of a woman's tenderness to be,
Requires nor child, nor woman's face to see.
I have sat too long.'

But the mother will not let him go, and her stormy eloquence completes the conquest which that dumb rhetoric had before well nigh achieved.

Yes, Menenius was right in his induction. His abstraction and brief summing up of 'this Volumnia' and her history, is the true one. She is very potent in the business of the state, whether you take her in her first literal acceptation, as the representative mother, or whether you take her in that symbolical and allusive comprehension, to which the emphasis on the name is not unfrequently made to point, as 'the nurse and mother of all humanities,' the instructor of the state, the former of its nobility, who in-forms their thoughts with nobleness, such nobleness, and such notions of it as they have, and who fits them for the place they are to occupy in the body of the common-weal.

Menenius has not exaggerated in his exposition the relative importance of this figure among those which the dumb-show of this play exhibits. Among the 'transient hieroglyphics' which the diseased common-weal produces on the scientific stage, when the question of its CURE is the question of the Play—in that great crowd of forms, in that moving, portentous, stormy pageant of senators, and consuls, and tribunes, and plebeians, whose great acts fill the scene—there are none more significant than these two, whom we saw at first 'seated on two low stools, sewing'; these two of the wife and mother—the commanding mother, and the 'gracious silence.'

'This Volumnia'—yes, let her school him, for it is from her school that he has come: let her conquer him, for she is the conserver of this harm. It is she who makes of it a tradition. To its utmost bound of consequences, she is the mother of it, and accountable to God and man for its growth and continuance. Consuls, and senators, and patricians, and tribunes, such as we have, are powerless without her, are powerless against her. The state begins with her; but, instead of it, she has bred and nursed the destroyer of the state. Let her conquer him, though her life-blood must flow for it now. This play is the Cure of the Common-weal, the convulsed and dying Common-weal; and whether the assault be from within or without, this woman must undo her work. The tribunes have sent for her now: she must go forth without shrinking, and slay her son. She was the true mother; she trained him for the common-weal, she would have made a patrician of him, but that craved a noble cunning; she was not instructed in it; she must pay the penalty of her ignorance—the penalty of her traditions—and slay him now. There is no help for it, for she has made with her traditions a thing that no common-weal can bear.

Woe for this Volumnia! Woe for the common-weal whose chiefs she has reared, whose great men and 'GOOD CITIZENS' she has made! Woe for her! Woe for the common-weal, for her boy approaches! The land is groaning and shaken; the faces of men gather blackness; the clashing of arms is heard in the streets, blood is flowing, the towns are blazing. Great Rome will soon be sacked with Romans, for her boy is coming home; the child of her instinct, the son of her ignorance, the son of her RELIGION, is coming home.

'O mother, mother!
What hast thou done?….
O my mother, mother! O,
You have won a happy victory to Rome,—
But for your son—'

Alas for him, and his gentle blood, and noble breeding, and his patrician greatness! Woe for the unlearned mother's son, who has made him great with such a training, that Rome's weal and his, Rome's greatness and his, must needs contend together—that 'Rome's happy victory' must needs be the blaze that shall darken him for ever!

Yet he storms again, with something like his old patrician fierceness; and yet not that, the tone is altered; he is humbler and tamer than he was, and he says himself, 'It is the first time that ever I have learned to scold'; but he is stung, even to boasting of his old heroic deeds, when Aufidius taunts him with his un-martial, un-divine infirmity, and brings home to him in very words, at last, the Poet's suppressed verdict, the Poet's deferred sentence, GUILTY!—of what? He is but A BOY, his nurse's boy, and he undertook the state! He is but A SLAVE, and he was caught climbing to the imperial chair, and putting on the purple. He is but 'a dog to the commonalty,' and he was sitting in the place of God.

Aufidius owns, indeed, to his own susceptibility to these particular and private affections. When Coriolanus turns to him after that appeal from Volumnia has had its effect, and asks:—

'Now, good Aufidius,
Were you in my stead, say, would you have heard
A mother less, or granted less, Aufidius?'

He answers, guardedly, 'I was moved withal.' But the philosopher has his word there, too, as well as the Poet, slipped in under the Poet's, covertly, 'I was moved with-all.' [It is the Play of the Common-weal.] And what should the single private man, the man of exclusive affections and changeful humours, do with the weal of the whole? In his noblest conditions, what business has he in the state? and who shall vote to give him the out-stretched wings and claws of Volscian armies, that he may say of Rome, all's mine, and give it to his wife or mother? Who shall follow in his train, to plough Rome and harrow Italy, who lays himself and all his forces at his mother's feet, and turns back at her word?

Aufidius. You lords and HEADS of the STATE, perfidiously
Has he betrayed your business, and given up
For certain drops of salt, your city Rome—
I say, your city—to his wife and mother:
Breaking his oath and resolution like
A twist of rotten silk; never admitting
Counsel of the war, but at his nurse's tears
He whined and roar'd away your victory,
That pages blushed at him, and men of heart
Looked wondering at each other.

[There is a look which has come down to us. That is
Elizabethan. That is the suppressed Elizabethan.]

Cor. Hear'st thou, Mars?

Auf. Name not the god thou Boy of tears.

Cor. Ha!

Auf. No MORE. [You are no more.]

Cor. Measureless liar, thou hast made my heart
Too great for what contains it. Boy? O Slave!
…. Boy? False hound!

[These are the names that are flying about here, now that the martial chiefs are criticising each other: it is no matter which side they go.]

'Boy? O slave!
… Boy? False hound! ['He is a very dog to the commonalty.']
Alone I did it. BOY?

But it is Volumnia herself who searches to the quick the principle of this boyish sovereignty, in her satire on the undivine passion she wishes to unseat. It is thus that she upbraids the hero with his un_manly_, ungracious, ignoble purpose:—

'Speak to me, son.

Thou hast affected the fine strains of HONOUR,
To imitate the graces of the gods;
To tear with thunder the wide cheeks o' the air,
And yet to charge thy sulphur with a bolt
That should but rive an oak. Why dost not speak?
Think'st thou it honourable for a NOBLE MAN
Still to remember wrongs?

For that is the height of the scientific affirmation also; the other was, in scientific language, its 'anticipation.' He wants nothing of a god but an eternity, and a heaven to throne in (slight deficiences in a god already). 'Yes, mercy, if you paint him truly.' 'I paint him in character.'

NOBILITY, HONOUR, MANLINESS, HEROISM, GOOD CITIZENSHIP, FREEDOM, DIVINITY, PATRIOTISM. We are getting a number of definitions here, vague popular terms, scientifically fixed, scientifically cleared, destined to waver, and be confused and mixed with other and fatally different things in the popular apprehension no more—when once this science is unfolded for that whole people for whom it was delivered—no more for ever.

There is no open dramatic embodiment in this play of the true ideal nobility, and manliness, and honour, and divinity. This is the false affirmation which is put upon the stage here, to be tried, and examined, and rejected. For it is to this Poet's purpose to show—and very much to his purpose to show, sometimes—what is not the true affirmation. His method is critical, but his rejection contains the true definition. The whole play is contrived to shape it here; all hands combine to frame it. Volscians and Romans conspire to pronounce it; the world is against this 'one man' and his part-liness, though he be indeed 'every man.' He himself has been compelled to pronounce it; for the speaker for the whole is the speaker in each of us, and pronounces his sentences on ourselves with our own lips. 'Being gentle wounded craves a noble cunning,' is the word of the noble, who comes back with a Volscian army to exhibit upon the stage this grand hieroglyphic, this grand dramatic negative of that nobility.

But it is from the lips of the mother, brought into this deadly antagonism with the manliness she has trained, compelled now to echo that popular rejection, that the Poet can venture to speak out, at last, from the depths of his true heroism. It is this Volumnia who strikes now to the heart of the play with her satire on this affectation of the graces of the gods,—this assumption of nobility, and manliness, and the fine strains of honour,—in one who is led only by the blind demon gods, 'that keep this dreadful pother o'er our heads,'—in one who is bounded and shut in after all to the range of his own poor petty private passions, shut up to a poverty of soul which forbids those assumptions, limited to a nature in which those strictly human terms can be only affectations, one who concentrates all his glorious special human gifts on the pursuit of ends for which the lower natures are also furnished. Honour, forsooth! the fine strains of honour, and the graces of the gods. Look at that Volscian army there.

'To tear with thunder the wide cheeks o' the air,
And yet to charge thy sulphur with a bolt
That should but rive an oak.
Why dost not speak?'

He can not. There is no speech for that. It does not bear review.

'Why dost not speak?
Think'st thou it honourable for a noble man
Still to remember wrongs?'

'Let it be virtuous to be obstinate,' let there be no better principle of that identity which we insist on in men, that firmness which we call manliness, and the cherished wrong is honour.

It is but an interrogative point, but the height of our affirmation is taken with it. It is a figure of speech and intensifies the affirmative with its irony.

'This a consul? No.'

'No more, but e'en a woman, and COMMANDED
By such poor passion as the maid that milks,
And does the meanest chares.' [QUEEN.]

'Give me that man that is not passion's slave.

Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice,
And could of men distinguish her election,
She hath seal'd thee for herself: for thou hast been
As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing.

But the man who rates so highly 'this single mould of Marcius,' and the wounded name of it, that he will forge another for it 'i' the fire of burning Rome,' who will hurt the world to ease the rankling of his single wrong, who will plough Rome and harrow Italy to cool the fever of his thirst for vengeance; this is not the man, this is not the hero, this is not THE GOD, that the scientific review accepts. Whoso has put him in the chair of state on earth, or in heaven, must 'revoke that ignorant election.' Whatever our 'perfect example in civil life' may be, and we are, perhaps, not likely to get it openly in the form of an historic 'composition' on this author's stage, whatever name and shape it may take when it comes, this evidently is not it. This Caius Marcius is dismissed for the present from this Poet's boards. This curule chair that stands here empty yet, for aught that we can see, and this crown of 'olives of endless age,' is not for him.

'Would you proceed especially against Caius Marcius?
Against him first.

'We proceed first by negatives, and conclude after every
species of rejection.'

On the surface of this play, lies everywhere the question of the Common-Weal, in its relation to the good that is private and particular, scientifically reviewed, as a question in proportion,—as the question of the whole against the part,—of the greater against the less,—nay, as the question of that which is against that which is not. For it is a treatment which throws in passing, the shadow of the old metaphysical suspicion and scepticism on that chaotic unaxiomatical condition of things which the scientific eye discovers here, for the new philosophy with all its new comprehension of the actual, with all its new convergency on practice, is careful to inform us that it observes, notwithstanding the old distinction between 'being and becoming.' This is an IDEAL philosophy also, though the notions of nature are more respected in it, than the spontaneous unconsidered notions of men.

It is the largeness of the objective whole, the historic whole and the faculty in man of comprehending it, and the sense of relation and obligation to it, as the highest historic law,—the formal, the essential law of kind in him, it is the breadth of reason, it is the circumference of conscience, it is the grandeur of duty which this author arrays here scientifically against that oblivion and ignoring of the whole, that forgetfulness of the world, and the universal tie which the ignorance of the unaided sense and the narrowness of passion and private affection create, whether in the one, or the few, or the many. It is the Weal of the whole against the will of the part, no matter where the limit of that partiality, or 'partliness,' as the 'poor citizen' calls it, is fixed whether it be the selfishness of the single self, or whether the household tie enlarges its range, whether it be the partiality of class or faction, or the partiality of kindred or race, or the partiality of geographic limits, the question of the play, the question of the whole, of the worthier whole, is still pursued with scientific exaction. It is the conflict with axioms which is represented here, and not with wordy axioms only, not with abstractions good for the human mind only, in its abstract self-sustained speculations, but with historical axioms, axioms which the universal nature knows, laws which have had the consent of things since this nature began, laws which passed long ago the universal commons.

It is the false unscientific state which is at war, not with abstract speculation merely, but with the nature of things and the received logic of the universe, which this man of a practical science wishes to call attention to. It is the crowning and enthroning of that which is private and particular, it is the anointing of passion and instinct, it is the arming of the absolute—the demon—will; it is the putting into the hands of the ignorant part the sceptre of the whole, which strikes the scientific Reviewer as the thing to be noted here. And by way of proceeding by negatives first, he undertakes to convey to others the impression which this state of things makes upon his own mind, as pointedly as may be, consistently with those general intentions which determine his proceedings and the conditions which limit them, and he is by no means timid in availing himself of the capabilities of his story to that end. The true spectacle of the play,—the principal hieroglyphic of it,—the one in which this hieroglyphic criticism approaches the metaphysical intention most nearly, is one that requires interpretation. It does not report itself to the eye at once. The showman stops to tell us before he produces it, that it is a symbol,—that this is one of the places where he 'prays in aid of similes,'—that this is a specimen of what he calls elsewhere 'allusive' writing. The true spectacle of the play,—the grand hieroglyphic of it,—is that view of the city, and the woman in the foreground kneeling for it, 'to her son, her corrected son,' begging for pardon of her corrected rebel—hanging for life on the chance of his changeful moods and passions. It is Rome that lies stretched out there upon her hills, in all her visible greatness and claims to reverence; it is Rome with her Capitolian crown, forth from which the Roman matron steps, and with no softer cushion than the flint, in the dust at the rebel's feet, kneels 'to show'—as she tells us—to show as clearly as the conditions of the exhibition allow it to be exhibited, DUTY as mistaken,—'as mistaken,'—all the while between the child and parent.

It is Jupiter that stoops; it is Olympus doing obeisance to the mole-hill; it is the divineness of the universal law—the formal law in man—that is prostrate and suppliant in her person; and the Poet exhausts even his own powers of expression, and grows inarticulate at last, in seeking to convey his sense of this ineffable, impossible, historical pretension. It is as 'if Olympus to a mole-hill should in supplication nod; it is as if the pebbles on the hungry beach should fillip the stars; as if the mutinous winds should strike the proud cedars against the fiery sun, murdering impossibility, to make what can not be, slight work,'—what can not be.

That was the spectacle of the play, and that was the world's spectacle when the play was written. Nay, worse; a thousandfold more wild and pitiful, and confounding to the intellect, and revolting to its sensibilities, was the spectacle that the State offered then to the philosophic eye. The Poet has all understated his great case. He has taken the pattern-man in the private affections, the noble man of mere instinct and passion, and put him in the chair of state;—the man whom nature herself had chosen and anointed, and crowned with kingly graces.

'As waves before a vessel under sail
So men obeyed him, and fell below his stern,'

'If he would but incline to the people, there never was a
worthier man.'

Not to the natural private affections and instincts, touched with the nobility of human sense,—not to the loyalty of the husband,—not to the filial reverence and duty of the son, true to that private and personal relationship at least; not to the gentleness of the patrician, true to that private patricianship also, must England owe her weal—such weal as she could beg and wheedle from her lord and ruler then. Not from the conquering hero with his fresh oakleaf on his brow, and the command of the god who led him in his speech and action,—and not from his lineal successor merely, must England beg her welfare then. It was not the venerable mother, or the gentle wife, with her dove's eyes able to make gods of earth forsworn, who could say then, 'The laws of England are at my commandment.'

Crimes that the historic pen can only point to,—not record,—low, illiterate, brutish stupidities, mad-cap folly, and wanton extravagancies and caprices, in their ideal impersonations—these were the gods that England, in the majesty of her State, in the sovereignty of her chartered weal, must abase herself to then. To the vices of tyranny, to low companions and their companions, and their kindred, the State must cringe and kneel then. To these,—men who meddled with affairs of State,—who took, even at such a time, the State to be their business,—must address themselves; for these were the councils in which England's peace and war were settled then, and the Tribune could enter them only in disguise. His veto could not get spoken outright, it could only be pronounced in under-tones and circumlocutions. Not with noble, eloquent, human appeals, could the soul of power be reached and conquered then—the soul of him 'within whose eyes sat twenty thousand deaths,' the man of the thirty legions, to whom this argument must be dedicated. 'Ducking observances,' basest flatteries, sycophancies past the power of man to utter, personal humiliations, and prostrations that seemed to teach 'the mind a most inherent baseness,' these were the weapons,—the required weapons of the statesman's warfare then. From these 'dogs of the commonalty' men who were indeed 'noble,' whose 'fame' did indeed 'fold in the orb o' the world,' must take then, as a purchase or a gift, deliverance from physical restraint, and life itself. These were the days when England's victories were 'blubbered and whined away,' in such a sort, that 'pages blushed at it, and men of heart looked wondering at each other.'

And, when science began first to turn her eye on history, and propose to herself the relief of the human estate, as her end, and the scientific arts as her means, this was the spectacle she found herself expected to endure; this was the state of things she found herself called upon to sanction and conserve. She could not immediately reform it—she must produce first her doctrine of 'true forms,' her scientific definitions and precepts based on them, and her doctrine of constructions. She could not openly condemn it; but she could criticise and reject it by means of that method which is 'sometimes necessary in the sciences,' and to which 'those who would let in new light upon the human mind must have recourse.' She could seize the grand hieroglyphic of the heroic past, and make it 'point with its finger' that which was unspeakable,—her scorn of it. She could borrow the freedom of the old Roman lips, to repronounce, in her own new dialect,—not their anticipation of her veto only, but her eternal affirmation,—the word of her consulship, the rule of her nobility,—the nobility of being,—being in the human,—the nobility of manliness,—the divinity of State, the true doctrine of it;—and, to speak truly, 'Antiquitas seculi, juventus mundi.'

CHAPTER VIII.

METAPHYSICAL AID.

'I do not like the fashion of your garments. You will say they
are Persian attire; but let them be changed.'—
The King to Tom o' Bedlam.

'Would you proceed especially against Caius Marcius?
Against him first.'

It is the cure of the Common-weal which this author has undertaken, for he found himself pre-elected to the care of the people and to the world's tribuneship. But he handles his subject in the natural, historical order, in the chronological order,—and not here only, but in that play of which this is a part,—of which this is the play within the Play,—in that grand, historical proceeding on the world's theatre, which it was given to the author of this play to institute.

He begins with the physical wants of men. The hunger, and cold, and weariness, and all the physical suffering and destitution of that human condition which is the condition of the many, has arrested his human eye, with its dumb, patient eloquence, and it is that which makes the starting point of his revolution. He translates its mute language, he anticipates its word. He is setting in movement operations that are intended to make 'coals cheap'; he proposes to have corn at his own price. He has so much confidence in what his tongue can do in the way of flattery, that he expects to come back beloved of all the trades in Rome. He will 'cog their hearts from them,' and get elected consul yet, with all their voices.

'Scribbling seems to be the sign of a disordered age,' says the philosopher, who finds so much occasion for the use of that art about these days. 'It seems as if it were the season for vain things when the hurtful oppress us; in a time when doing ill is common, to do nothing but what signifies nothing is a kind of commendation. 'Tis my comfort that I shall be one of the last that are called in question; and, whilst the greater offenders are calling to account, I shall have leisure to amend; for it would be unreasonable to punish the less troublesome, whilst we are infested with the greater. As the physician said to one who presented him his finger to dress, and who, he perceived, had an ulcer in his lungs, "Friend," said he, "it is not now time to concern yourself about your fingers-ends". And yet—[and yet]—I saw, some years ago, a person whose name and memory I have in very great esteem, in the very height of our great disorders, when there was neither law nor justice put in execution, nor magistrate that performed his office—no more than there is now—publish, I know not what pitiful reformations, about clothes, cookery, and law chicanery. These are amusements wherewith to feed a people that are ill-used, to show that they are not totally forgotten.'

That is the account of it. That is the history of this innovation, beginning with books, proposing pitiful reformations in clothes, and cookery, and law chicanery. That would serve to show an ill-used people that there was some care for them stirring, some tribuneship at work already. 'What I say of physic generally, may serve AS AN EXAMPLE OF ALL OTHER SCIENCES,' says this same scribbler, under his scribbling cognomen. 'We certainly intend to comprehend them all,' says the graver authority, 'such as Ethics, Politics, and Logic.'

That is, where we are exactly in this so entertaining performance, which was also designed for the benefit of an ill-used people; for this candidate for the chief magistracy is the Aedile also, and while he stands for his place these spectacles will continue.

It is that physical suffering of 'the poor citizens' that he begins with here. It is the question of the price of corn with which he opens his argument. The dumb and patient people are on his stage already; dumb and patient no longer, but clamoring against the surfeiting and wild wanton waste of the few; clamoring for their share in God's common gifts to men, and refusing to take any longer the portion which a diseased state puts down for them. But he tells us from the outset, that this claim will be prosecuted in such a manner as to 'throw forth greater themes for insurrection's arguing.'

Though all the wretched poor were clothed and fed with imperial treasure, with imperial luxury and splendour—though all the arts which are based on the knowledge of physical causes should be put in requisition to relieve their need—though the scientific discoveries and inventions which are pouring in upon human life from that field of scientific inquiry which our men of science have already cultivated their golden harvests, should reach at last poor Tom himself—though that scientific movement now in progress should proceed till it has reached the humblest of our human kin, and surrounded him with all the goods of the private and particular nature, with the sensuous luxuries and artistic elegancies and refinements of the lordliest home—that good which is the distinctive human good, that good which is the constitutional human end, that good, that formal and essential good, which it is the end of this philosophy to bring to man, would not necessarily be realised.

For that, and nothing short of that, the 'advancement' of the species to that which it is blindly reaching for, painfully groping for—its form in nature, its ideal perfection—the advancement of it to something more noble than the nobility of a nobler kind of vermin—a state which involves another kind of individual growth and greatness, one which involves a different, a distinctively 'human principle' and tie of congregation, is that which makes the ultimate intention of this philosophy.

The organization of that large, complex, difficult form in nature, in which the many are united in 'the greater congregation'; that more extensive whole, of which the units are each, not simple forms, but the complicated, most highly complex, and not yet subdued complexity, which the individual form of man in itself constitutes; this so difficult result of nature's combinations and her laws of combination, labouring, struggling towards its consummation, but disordered, threatened, convulsed, asking aid of art, is the subject; the cure of it, the cure and healthful regimen of it, the problem.

And it is a born doctor who has taken it in hand this time; one of your natural geniuses, with an inward vocation for the art of healing, instructed of nature beforehand in that mystery and profession, and appointed of her to that ministry. Wherever you find him, under whatever disguise, you will find that his mind is running on the structure of bodies, the means of their conservation and growth, and the remedies for their disorders, and decays, and antagonisms, without and within. He has a most extraordinary and incurable natural bent and determination towards medicine and cures in general; he is always inquiring into the anatomy of things and the qualities of drugs, analysing them and mixing them, finding the art of their compounds, and modifying them to suit his purposes, or inventing new ones; for, like Aristotle, to whom he refers for a precedent, he wishes 'to have a hand in everything.'

But he is not a quack. He has no respect for the old authoritative prescriptions, if they fail in practice, whether they come in Galen's name, or another's; but he is just as severe upon 'the empiricutics,' on the other hand, and he objects to 'a horse-drench' for the human constitution in the greater congregation, as much as he does in that distinctively complex delicate structure which the single individual human frame in itself constitutes.

Menenius [speaking of the letter which Volumnia has told him of, and putting in a word on this Doctor's behalf, for it is not very much to the purpose on his own] says, 'It gives me an estate of seven years' health, during which time I will make a lip at the physician.' A lip—a lip—and 'what a deal of scorn looks beautiful on it,' when once you get to see it. But this is the play of 'conservation with advancement.' It is the cure and preservation of the common-weal, to which all lines are tending, to which all points and parentheses are pointing; and thus he continues: 'The most sovereign prescription in Galen is but empiricutic, and to this preservative of no better report than a horse-drench.' So we shall find, when we come to try it—this preservative,—this conservation.

This Doctor has a great opinion of nature. He thinks that 'the physician must rely on her powers for his cures in the last resort, and be able to make prescriptions of them, instead of making them out of his own pre-conceits, if he would not have of his cure a conceit also.' His opinion is, that 'nature is made better by no mean, but she herself hath made that mean;'—

'So o'er that art
Which you say adds to nature, is an art
That nature makes…
…This is an art
Which does mend nature, change it rather: but
The art itself is nature.'

That is the Poet's view, but the Philosopher is of the same opinion. 'Man while operating can only apply or withdraw natural bodies, nature internally performs the rest.' Those who become practically versed in nature are the mechanic, the mathematician, the alchemist, and the magician, but all, as matters now stand with faint efforts and meagre success.'… 'The syllogism forces assent and not things.'

'The subtlety of nature is far beyond that of sense or of the understanding. The syllogism consists of propositions, these of words, words are the signs of notions, notions represent things. If our notions are fantastical, the whole structure falls to the ground; but they are for the most part improperly abstracted and deduced from things.'

There is the whole of it; there it is in a nut-shell. As we are very apt to find it in this method of delivery by aphorisms; there is the shell of it at least. And considering 'the torture and press of the method,' and the instruments of torture then in use for correcting the press, on these precise questions, there is as much of the kernel, perhaps, as could reasonably be looked for, in those particular aphorisms; and 'aphorisms representing a knowledge broken, do invite men to inquire further;' so this writer of them tells us.

With all his reliance on nature then, and with all his scorn of the impracticable and arrogant conceits of learning as he finds it, and of the quackeries that are practised in its name, this is no empiric. He will not approach that large, complex, elaborate combination of nature, that laboured fruit of time,—her most subtle and efficacious agent, so prolific in results that amaze and confound our art, —he will not approach this great structure with all its unperceived interior adaptations,—with so much of nature's own work in it, —hehas too much respect for her own 'cunning hand,' to approach it without learning,—to undertake its cure with blind ignorant experiments. He will not go to work in the dark on this structure, with drug or surgery. This is going to be a scientific cure. 'Before we proceed any further, hear me speak.' He will inquire beforehand the nature of this particular structure that he proposes to meddle with, and get its normal state defined at the outset. But that will take him into the question of structures in general, as they appear in nature, and the intention of nature in them. He will have a comparative anatomy to help him. This analysis will not stop with the social unit, he will analyze him. It will not stop with him. It will comprehend the principles of all combinations. He will not stop in his analysis of this complexity till he comes to that which precedes all combination, and survives it—the original simplicity of nature. He will come to this cure armed with the universal 'simples;' he will have all the original powers of nature, 'which are not many,' in his hands, to begin with; and he will have more than that. He will have the doctrine of their combinations, not in man only, but in all the kinds;—those despised kinds, that claim such close relationship— such wondrous relationship with man; and he will not go to the primitive instinctive nature only for his knowledge on this point. He will inquire of art,—the empiric art,—and rude accident, what latent efficacies they have detected in her, what churlish secrets of hers they have wrung from her. You will find the gardener's and the farmer's reports, and not the physician's and the surgeon's only, inserted in his books of policy and ethics. The 'nettles' theory of the rights of private life, and his policy of foreign relationships, appears to this learned politician to strengthen his case a little, and the pertinacious refusal of the 'old crab trees' to lend their organizations, such as they are, to the fructification of a bud of nobler kind, is quoted with respect as a decision of nature in another court, on this same question, which is one of the questions here. For the principle of conservation as well as the other principles of the human conduct, appears to this philosopher to require a larger treatment than our men of learning have given it hitherto.

And this is the man of science who takes so much pains to acknowledge his preference for 'good compositions'—who thinks so much of good _natural _compositions and their virtues, who is always expressing or betraying his respect for the happy combinations, the sound results, the luxuriant and beautiful varieties with which nature herself illustrates the secret of her fertility, and publishes her own great volume of examples in the Arts.

First it is the knowledge of the simple forms into which all the variety of nature is convertible, the definitions which account for all—that which is always the same in all the difference, that which is always permanent in all the change; first it is the doctrine of 'those simple original forms, or differences of things, which like the alphabet are not many, the degrees and co-ordinations whereof make all this variety,' and then it is the doctrine of their combinations,—the combinations which nature has herself accomplished, those which the arts have accomplished, and those which are possible, which have not been accomplished,—those which the universal nature working in the human, working in each, from the platform of the human, from that height in her ascending scale of species, dictates now, demands,—divinely orders,—divinely instructs us in.

This, and nothing short of this,—this so radical knowledge, reaching from the summit of the human complexity, to the primaeval depths of nature,—to the simplicity of the nature that is one in all,—to the indissoluble laws of being,—the laws of being in the species,—the law with which the specific law is convertible,—the law which cannot be broken in the species, which involves loss of species,—loss of being in the species,—this so large and rich and various knowledge, comprehending all the varieties of nature in its fields, putting all nature under contribution for its results, this—this is the knowledge with which the man of science approaches now, this grand particular.

The reader who begins to examine for himself, for the first time, in the original books of it, this great system of the Modern Science, impressed with the received notions in regard to its scope and intentions, will be, perhaps, not a little surprised and puzzled, to find that the thing which is, of all others, most strenuously insisted on by this author, in his own person, next to the worthlessness of the conceits which have no correspondence with things, is the fact that the knowledge of the physical causes is altogether inadequate to that relief of the condition of man, which he finds to be the immediate end of science; and that it is a system of metaphysics, a new metaphysics, which he is everywhere propounding to that end,—openly, and with all the latent force of his new rhetoric.

It is 'metaphysical aid' that he offers us; it is magic, but, 'magic lawful as eating'; it is a priestly aid that he offers us, the aid of one who has penetrated to the inner sanctuary of the law,—the priest of nature, newly instructed in her mind and will, who comes forth from his long communing with her, with her own 'great seal' in his hands—with the rod of her enchantments, that old magicians desired to pluck from her, and did not—with the gift of the new and nobler miracles of science as the witness of his anointing—with the reading of 'God's book of power'—with the alphabet of its mystery, as the proof of his ordaining—with the key of it, hid from the foundation of the world until now.

The first difference between this metaphysics, and all the metaphysics that ever went before it or came after it, is, that it is practical. It carries in its hand, gathered into the simplicity of the causes that are not many, the secret of all motivity, the secret of all practice. It tells you so; over and over again, in so many words, it dares to tell you so. It opens that closed palm a little, and shows you what is there; it bids you look on while it stirs those lines but a little, and new ages have begun.

It is a practical metaphysics, and the first word of its speech is to forbid abstractions—your abstractions. It sets out from that which is 'constant, eternal, and universal'; but from that which is 'constant, eternal, and universal in nature.' It sets out from that which is fixed; but it is from the fixed and constant causes: 'forms' not 'ideas.' The simplicity which it seeks is the simplicity into which the historical phenomena are resolvable; the terms which it seeks are the terms which do not come within the range of the unscientific experience; they are the unknown terms of the unlearned; they are the causes 'which, like the alphabet, are not many'; they are the terms which the understanding knows, which the reason grasps, and comprehends in its unity; but they are the convertible terms of all the multiplicity and variety of the senses, they are the convertible terms—the practically convertible terms of the known—practically —that is the difference.

In that pyramid of knowledges which the science of things constitutes; in that converging ascent to the original simplicity and identity of nature, beginning at that broad science which makes its base—the science of Natural History—beginning with the basis of the historical complexity and difference; in that pyramid of science, that new and solid pyramid, which the Inductive science—which the inquiry into causes that are operant in nature builds, this author will not stop, either on that broad field of the universal history of nature, which is the base of it, or on that first stage of the ascent which the platform of 'the physical causes' makes. The causes which lie next to our experience—the causes, which are variable and many, do not satisfy him. He gains that platform, and looks about him. He finds that even a diligent inquiry and observation there would result in many new inventions beneficial to men; but the knowledge of these causes 'takes men in narrow and restrained paths'; he wants for the founding of his rule of art the cause which, under all conditions, secures the result, which gives the widest possible command of means. He refuses to accept of the physical causes as the bourne of his philosophy, in theory or practice. He looks with a great human scorn on all the possible arts and solutions which lie on that platform, when the proposal is to stop his philosophy of speculation and practice there. It is not for the scientific arts, which that field of observation yields, that he begs leave to revive and re-integrate the misapplied and abused name of natural magic, which, in the true sense, is but natural wisdom, or 'PRUDENCE.'

He can hardly stop to indicate the results which the culture of that field does yield for the relief of the human estate. His eye is uplifted to that new platform of a solid metaphysics, an historical metaphysics, which the inductive method builds. His eye is intent always on that higher stage of knowledge where that which is common to the sciences is found. He takes the other in passing only. Beginning with the basis of a new observation and history of nature, he will found a new metaphysics—an objective metaphysics—the metaphysics of induction. His logic is but a preparation for that. He is going to collect, by his inductive method, from all nature, from all species, the principles that are in all things; and he is going to build, on the basis of those inducted principles,—on the sure basis of that which is constant, and eternal, and universal in nature, the sure foundations of his universal practice; for, like common logic, the inductive method comprehends 'all.' That same simplicity, which the abstract speculations of men aspire to, and create, it aspires to and attains, by the rough roads, by the laboured stages of observation and experiment.

He is, indeed, compelled to involve his phraseology here in a most studious haze of scholasticism. Perspicuity is by no means the quality of style most in request, when we come to these higher stages of sciences. Impenetrable mists, clouds, and darkness, impenetrable to any but the eye that seeks also the whole, involve the heaven-piercing peak of this new height of learning, this new summit of a scientific divinity, frowning off—warding off, as with the sword of the cherubim, the unbidden invaders of this new Olympus, where sit the gods, restored again,—the simple powers of nature, recovered from the Greek abstractions,—not 'the idols'—not the impersonated abstractions, the false images of the mind of man—not the logical forms of those spontaneous abstractions, emptied of their poetic content—but the strong gods that make our history, that compose our epics, that conspire for our tragedies, whether we own them and build altars to them or not. This is that summit of the prima philosophia where the axioms that command all are found—where the observations that are common to the sciences, and the precepts that are based on these, grow. This is that height where the same footsteps of nature, treading in different substances or matters, lost in the difference below, are all cleared and identified. This is the height of the forms of the understanding, of the unity of the reason; not as it is in man only, but as it is in all matters or substances.

He does not care to tell us,—he could not well tell us, in popular language, what the true name of that height of learning is: he could not well name without circumlocution, that height which a scientific abstraction makes,—an abstraction that attains simplicity without destroying the concrete reality, an abstraction that attains as its result only a higher history,—a new and more intelligible reading of it,—a solution of it—that which is fixed and constant and accounts for it,—an abstraction whose apex of unity is the highest, the universal history, that which accounts for all,—the equivalent,—the scientific equivalent of it.

But whatever it be, it is something that is going to take the place of the unscientific abstractions, both in theory and practice; it is something that is going to supplant ultimately the vain indolent speculation, the inert because unscientific speculation, that seeks to bind the human life in the misery of an enforced and sanctioned ignorance, sealing up with its dogmas to an eternal collision with the universal laws of God and nature,—laws that no dogma or conceit can alter,—all the unreckoned generations of the life of man. Whatever it be, it is going to strike with its primeval rock, through all the air palace of the vain conceits of men;—it is going straight up, through that old conglomeration of dogmas, that the ages of the human ignorance have built and left to us. The unity to which all things in nature, inspired with her universal instinct tend,—the unity of which the mind and heart of man in its sympathy with the universal whole is but an expression, that unity of its own which the mind is always seeking to impart to the diversities which the unreconciled experience offers it, which it must have in its objective reality, which it will make for itself if it cannot find it, which it does make in ignorant ages, by falling back upon its own form and ignoring the historic reality,—which it builds up without any solid objective basis, by ignoring the nature of things, or founds on one-sided partial views of their nature, that unity is going to have its place in the new learning also—but it is going to be henceforth the unity of knowledge—not of dogmas, not of belief merely, for knowledge, and not belief merely,—knowledge, and not opinion, is power.

That man is not the only creature in nature, was the discovery of this philosophy. The founders of it observed that there were a number of species, which appeared to be maintaining a certain sort of existence of their own, without being dependent for it on the movements within the human brain. To abate the arrogance of the species,—to show the absurdity and ignorance of the attempt to constitute the universe beforehand within that little sphere, the human skull, ignoring the reports of the intelligencers from the universal whole, with which great nature has herself supplied us,—to correct the arrogance and specific bias of the human learning,—was the first attempt of the new logic. It is the house of the Universal Father that we dwell in, and it has 'many mansions,' and 'man is not the best lodged in it.' Noble, indeed, is his form in nature, inspired with the spirit of the universal whole, able in his littleness to comprehend and embrace the whole, made in the image of the universal Primal Cause, whose voice for us is human; but there are other dialects of the divine also,—there are nobler creatures lodged with us, placed above us; with larger gifts, with their ten talents ruling over our cities. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth also, and their words unto the end of the world; and the poor beetle that we tread on, and the daisy and the lily in all its glory, and the sparrows that are going 'two for a farthing,' come in for their place also in this philosophy—the philosophy of science—the philosophy of the kinds, the philosophy of the nature that is one in them,—the metaphysics of history.

'Although there exists nothing IN NATURE except individual bodies, exhibiting distinct individual effects, according to individual LAWS, yet in each branch of LEARNING that very LAW,—its investigation, discovery and development—are the foundation both of theory and practice; this law, therefore, and its parallel in each science, is what we understand by the term, FORM.'

That is a sentence to crack the heads of the old abstractionists. Before that can be read, the new logic will have to be put in requisition; the idols of the tribe will have to be dismissed first. The inveterate and 'pernicious habit of abstraction,'—that so pernicious habit of the men of learning must be overawed first.

'There exists nothing in nature except individual bodies, exhibiting distinct individual effects, according to individual laws.' The concrete is very carefully guarded there against that 'pernicious habit'; it is saved at the expense of the human species, at the expense of its arrogance. Nobody need undertake to abstract those laws, whatever they may be, for this master has turned his key on them. They are in their proper place; they are in the things themselves, and cannot be taken out of them. The utmost that you can do is to attain to a scientific knowledge of them, one that exactly corresponds with them. That correspondence is the point in the new metaphysics, and in the new logic;—that was what was wanting in the old. 'The investigation, discovery, and development of this law, in every branch of learning, are the foundation both of theory and practice. This law, therefore, and its parallel in each science, is what we understand by the term FORM.' The distinction is very carefully made between the 'cause in nature,' and that which corresponds to it, in the human mind, the parallel to it in the sciences; for the notions of men and the notions of nature are extremely apt to differ when the mind is left to form its notions without any scientific rule or instrument; and these ill-made abstractions, which do not correspond with the cause in nature, are of no efficacy in the arts, for nature takes no notice of them whatever.

There is one term in use here which represents at the same time the cause in nature, and that which corresponds to it in the mind of man—the parallel to it in the sciences. When these exactly correspond, one term suffices. The term 'FORM' is preferred for that purpose in this school. The term which was applied to the abstractions of the old philosophy, with a little modification, is made to signalise the difference between the old and the new. The 'IDEAS' of the old philosophy, the hasty abstractions of it, are 'the idols' of the new—the false deceiving images—which must be destroyed ere that which is fixed and constant in nature can establish its own parallels in our learning. 'Too untimely a departure, and too remote a recess from particulars,' is the cause briefly assigned in this criticism for this want of correspondence hitherto. 'But it is manifest that Plato, in his opinion of ideas, as one that had a wit of elevation situate as upon a cliff, did descry that forms were the true object of knowledge, but lost the real fruit of that opinion by considering of forms as absolutely abstracted from matter, and not confined and determined by matter.' 'Lost the fruit of that opinion'—this is the author who talks so 'pressly.' Two thousand years of human history are summed up in that so brief chronicle. Two thousand years of barren science, of wordy speculation, of vain theory; two thousand years of blind, empirical, unsuccessful groping in all the fields of human practice. 'And so,' he continues, concluding that summary criticism with a little further development of the subject, 'and so, turning his opinion upon theology, wherewith all his natural philosophy is infected.' Natural philosophy infected with 'opinion,'—no matter whose opinion it is, or under what name it comes to us, whatever else it is good for, is not good for practice. And this is the philosophy which includes both theory and practice. 'That which in speculative philosophy corresponds to the cause, in practical philosophy becomes the rule.'

But that which distinguishes this from all others is, that it is the philosophy of 'HOPE'; and that is the name for it in both its fields, in speculation and practice. The black intolerable wall, which those who stopped us on the lower platform of this pyramid of true knowledge brought us up with so soon—that blank wall with which the inquiry for the physical causes in nature limits and insults our speculation—has no place here, no place at all on this higher ground of science, which the knowledge of true forms creates—this true ground of the understanding, the understanding of nature, and the universal reason of things. 'He who is acquainted with forms, comprehends the unity of nature in substances apparently most distinct from each other.' Neither is that base and sordid limit, with which the philosophy of physical causes shuts in the scientific arts and their power for human relief, found here. For this is the prima philosophia, where the universal axioms, the axioms that command all, are found: and the precepts of the universal practice are formed on them. 'Even the philosopher himself—openly speaking from this summit—will venture to intimate briefly to men of understanding' the comprehension of its base, and the field of practice which it commands. 'Is not the ground,' he inquires, modestly, 'is not the ground which Machiavel wisely and largely discourseth concerning governments, that the way to establish and preserve them is to reduce them ad principia, a rule in religion and nature, as well as in civil administration?' There is the 'administrative reform' that will not need reforming, that waits for the science of forms and constructions. But he proceeds: 'Was not the Persian magic' [and that is the term which he proposes to restore for 'the part operative' of this knowledge of forms], 'was not the Persian magic a reduction or correspondence of the principles and architecture of nature to the rules and policy of governments?' There is no harm, of course, in that timid inquiry; but the student of the Zenda-vesta will be able to get, perhaps, some intimation of the designs that are lurking here, and will understand the revived and reintegrated sense with which the term magic is employed to indicate the part operative of this new ground of science. 'Neither are these only similitudes,' he adds, after extending these significant inquiries into other departments of practice, and demonstrating that this is the universality from which all other professions are nourished: 'Neither are these only similitudes, as men of narrow observation may conceive them to be, but the same footsteps of nature, treading or printing upon several subjects or matters.'

'It must, however, be observed, that this method of operating' [which considers nature as SIMPLE, though in a concrete body] ['I the first of any, by my universal being.' Michael de Montaigne.] 'sets out from what is constant, eternal, and universal in nature; and opens such broad paths to human power, as the thought of man can in the present state of things scarcely comprehend or figure to itself,'

Yes, it is the Philosophy of Hope. The perfection of the human form, the limit of the human want, is the limit of its practice; the limit of the human inquiry and demand is the limit of its speculation.

The control of effects which this higher knowledge of nature offers us—this knowledge of what she is beforehand—the practical certainty which this interior acquaintance with her, this acquaintance that identifies her under all the variety of her manifestations, is able to command—that comprehensive command of results which the knowledge of the true causes involves—the causes which are always present in all effects, which are constant under all fluctuations, the same under all the difference—the 'power' of this knowledge, its power to relieve human suffering, is that which the discoverer of it insists on most in propounding it to men; but the mind in which that 'wonder'—that is, 'the seed of knowledge'—brought forth this plant, was not one to overlook or make light of that want in the human soul, which only knowledge can appease—that love which leads it to the truth, not for the sake of a secondary good, but because it is her life.

'Although there is a most intimate connection, and almost an identity between the ways of human power and human knowledge, yet on account of the pernicious and inveterate habit of dwelling upon abstractions, it is by far the safest method to commence and build up sciences from those foundations which bear a relation to the practical division, and to let them mark out and limit the theoretical.' Something like that the Poet must have been thinking of, when he spoke of making 'the art and practic part of life, the mistress to its theoric;'—'let that mark out and limit the theoretical.'

That inveterate and pernicious habit, which makes this course the safest one, is one that he speaks of in the Advancement of Learning, as that which has been of 'such ill desert towards learning,' as 'to reduce it to certain empty and barren generalities, the mere husks and shells of sciences,' good for nothing at the very best, unless they serve to guide us to the kernels that have been forced out of them, by the torture and press of the method,—the mere outlines and skeletons of knowledges, 'that do but offer knowledge to scorn of practical men, and are no more aiding to practice,' as the author of this universal skeleton confesses, 'than an Ortelius's universal map is, to direct the way between London and York.'

The way to steer clear of those empty and barren generalities, which do but offer learning to the scorn of the men of practice is, he says, to begin on the practical side, and that is just what we are doing here now in this question of the consulship,—that so practical and immediately urgent question which was, threatening then to drive out every other from the human consideration. If learning had anything to offer on that subject, which would not excite the scorn of practical men, then certainly was the time to produce it.

We begin on the practical side here, and as to theory, we are rigidly limited to that which the question of the play requires,—the practical question marks it out,—we have just as much as is required for the solution of that, and not so much as a 'jot' more. But mark the expression:—'it is by far the safest method to commence and build up sciences'—the particular sciences,—the branches of science—from those foundations which bear a relation to the practical division. We begin with a great practical question, and though the treatise is in a form which seems to offer it for amusement, rather than instruction, it has at least this advantage, that it does not offer it in the suspicious form of a theory, or in the distasteful form of a learned treatise,—a tissue of barren and empty generalities. The scorn of practical men is avoided, if it were only by its want of pretension; and the fact that it does not offer itself as a guide to practice, but rather insinuates itself into that position. We begin with the practical question, with its most sharply practical details, we begin with particulars, but that which is to be noted is, 'the foundations' of the universal philosophy are under our feet to begin with. At the first step we are on the platform of the prima philosophia; the last conclusions of the inductive science, the knowledge of the nature of things, is the ground,—the solid continuity—that we proceed on. That is the ground on which we build this practice. That is the trunk from which this branch of sciences is continued:—that trunk of universality which we are forbidden henceforth to scorn, because all the professions are nourished from it. That universality which the men of practice scorn no more, since they have tasted of its proofs, since they have reached that single bough of it, which stooped so low, to bring its magic clusters within their reach. Fed with their own chosen delights, with the proof of the divinity of science, on their sensuous lips, they cry, 'Thou hast kept the good wine until now.' Clasping on the magic robes for which they have not toiled or spun, sitting down by companies,—not of fifties,—not of hundreds,—not of thousands—sitting down by myriads, to this great feast, that the man of science spreads for them, in whose eye, the eye of a divine pity looked forth again, and saw them faint and weary still, and without a shepherd,—sitting down to this feast, for which there is no sweat or blood on their brows, revived, rejoicing, gazing on the bewildering basketfuls that are pouring in, they cry, answering after so long a time, for their part Pilate's question: This, so far as it goes at least, this is truth. And the rod of that enchantment was plucked here. It is but a branch from this same trunk—this trunk of 'universality,' which the men of practice will scorn no more, when once they reach the multitudinous boughs of this great tree of miracles, where the nobler fruits, the more chosen fruits of the new science, are hidden still.

Continued from that 'trunk,' heavy with its juices, stoops now this branch; its golden 'hangings' mellowed,—time mellowed,—ready to fall unshaken. Built on that 'foundation,' rises now this fair structure, the doctrine of the state. That knowledge of nature in general, that interior knowledge of her, that loving insight, which is not baffled with her most foreign aspects; but detects her, and speaks her word, as from within, in all, is that which meets us here, that which meets us at the threshold. Our guide is veiled, but his raiment is priestly. It is great nature's stole that he wears; he will alter our—Persian. We are walking on the pavements of Art; but it is Nature's temple still; it is her 'pyramid,' and we are within, and the light from the apex is kindling all; and the dust 'that the rude wind blows in our face,' and 'the poor beetle that we tread on,' and the poor 'madman and beggar too,' are glorious in it, and of our 'kin.' Those universal forms which the book of science in the abstract has laid bare already, are running through all; the cord of them is visible in all the detail. Their foot-prints, which have been tracked to the height where nature is one, are seen for the first time cleared, uncovered here, in all the difference. This many-voiced speech, that sounds so deep from every point, deep as from the heart of nature, is not the ventriloquist's artifice, is not a poor showman's trick. It is great nature's voice—her own; and the magician who has untied her spell, who knows the cipher of 'the one in all' the priest who has unlocked her inmost shrine, and plucked out the heart of her mystery—is 'the Interpreter.'

CHAPTER IX.

THE CURE—PLAN OF INNOVATION—NEW DEFINITIONS.

'Swear by thy double self
And that's an oath of credit.'

'Having thus far proceeded
… Is it not meet
That I did amplify my judgment in
Other conclusions?'

It is the trunk of the prima philosophia then which puts forth these new and wondrous boughs, into all the fields of human speculation and practice, filling all our outdoor, penetrating all our indoor life, with their beauty and fragrance; overhanging every roof, stooping to every door, with their rich curtains and clusters of ornament and delight, with their ripe underhanging clusters of axioms of practice—brought down to particulars, ready for use—with their dispersed directions overhanging every path,—with their aphorisms made out of the pith and heart of sciences, 'representing a broken knowledge, and, therefore, inviting the men of speculation to inquire farther.'

It is from this trunk of a scientific universality, of a useful, practical, always-at-hand, all-inclusive, historical universality, to which the tracking of the principles, operant in history, to their simple forms and 'causes in nature,' conducts the scientific experimenter,—it is from this primal living trunk and heart of sciences, to which the new method of learning conducts us, that this great branch of scientific practice comes, which this drama with its 'transitory shows' has brought safely down to us;—this two-fold branch of ethics and politics, which come to us—conjoined—as ethics and politics came in other systems then not scientific,—making in their junction, and through all their divergencies, 'the forbidden questions' of science.

The science of this essentially conjoined doctrine is that which makes, in this case, the novelty. 'The nature which is formed in everything,' and not in man only, and the faculty, in man, of comprehending that wider nature, is that which makes the higher ground, from which a science of his own specific nature, and the explanation of its phenomenon, is possible to man. Except from this height of a common nature, there is no such thing as a scientific explanation of these phenomena possible. And this explanation is what the specific nature in man, with its speculative grasp of a larger whole—with its speculative grasp of a universal whole,—with its instinctive moral reach and comprehension corresponding to that,—constitutionally demands and 'anticipates.'

And the knowledge of this nature which is formed in everything, and not in man only, is the beginning, not of a speculative science of the human nature merely,—it is the beginning,—it is the indispensable foundation of the arts in which a successful artistic advancement of that nature, or an artistic cure or culture of it is propounded. The fact that the 'human nature' is, indeed, what it is called, a 'nature,' the fact that the human species is a species,—the fact that the human kind is but a kind, neighboured with many others from which it is isolated by its native walls of ignorance,—neighboured with many others, more or less known, known and unknown, more or less kind-ly, more or less hostile,—species, kinds, whose dialects of the universal laws, man has not found,—the fact that the universal, historic principles are operant in all the specific modifications of human nature, and control and determine them, the fact that the human life admits of a scientific analysis, and that its phenomena require to be traced to their true forms,—this is the fact which is the key to the new philosophy,—the key which unlocks it,—the key to the part speculative, and the part operative of it.

And this is the secret of the difference between this philosophy and all other systems and theories of man's life on earth that had been before it, or that have come after it. For this new and so solid height of natural philosophy,—solid,—historical,—from its base in the divergency of natural history, to its utmost peak of unity,—this scientific height of a common nature, whose summit is 'prima philosophia,' with its new universal terms and axioms,—this height from which man, as a species, is also overlooked, and his spontaneous notions and theories criticised, subjected to that same criticism with which history itself is always flying in the face of them,—from which the specific bias in them is everywhere detected,—this new 'pyramid' of knowledge is the one on whose rock-hewn terraces the conflict of views, the clash of man's opinions shall not sound: this is the system which has had, and shall have, no rival.

And this is the key to this philosophy, not where it touches human nature only, but everywhere where it substitutes for abstract human notions—specific human notions that are powerless in the arts, or narrow observations that are restrained and uncertain in the rules of practice they produce,—powers, true forms, original agencies in nature, universal powers, sure as nature herself, and her universal form.

To abase the specific human arrogance, to overthrow 'the idols of the tribe,' is the ultimate condition of this learning. Man as man, is not a primal, if he be an ultimate, fact in nature. Nature is elder and greater than he, and requires him to learn of her, and makes little of his mere conceits and dogmas.

From the height of that new simplicity which this philosophy has gained—not as the elder philosophies had gained theirs, by pure contemplation, by hasty abstraction and retreat to the à priori sources of knowledge and belief in man,—which it has gained, too, by a wider induction than the facts of the human nature can supply—with the torch of these universal principles cleared of their historic complexities, with the torch of the nature that is formed in everything, it enters here this great, unenclosed field of human life and practice, this Spenserian wilderness, where those old, gnarled trunks, and tangled boughs, and wretched undergrowths of centuries, stop the way, where those old monsters, which the action of this play exposes, which this philosophy is bound to drag out to the day, are hid.

The radical universal fact—the radical universal distinction of the double nature of GOOD which is formed in everything, and not in man only, and the two universal motions which correspond to that, the one, as everything, is a total or substantive in itself, with its corresponding motion; for this is the principle of selfishness and war in nature—the principle which struggles everywhere towards decay and the dissolution of the larger wholes, and not in man only, though the foolish, unscientific man, who does not know how to track the phenomena of his own nature to their causes,—who has no bridge from the natural internal phenomena of his own consciousness into the continent of nature, may think that it is, and reason of it as if it were;—this double nature of good, 'the one, as a thing, is a total or substantive in itself, the other as it is, a part or member of a greater body, whereof the latter is in degree the greater and the worthier, as it tends to the conservation of a more general form'—this distinction, which the philosopher of this school has laid down in his work on the scientific advancement of the human species, with a recommendation that it should be strongly planted, which he has planted there, openly, as the root of a new science of ethics and policy, will be found at the heart of all this new history of the human nature; but in this play of the true nobility, and the scientific cure of the commonweal, it is tracked openly to its most immediate, obvious, practical application. In all these great 'illustrated' scientific works, which this new school of learning, with the genius of science for its master, contrived to issue, all the universally actual and active principles are tracked to their proper specific modifications in man, and not to their development in his actual history merely; and the distinctive essential law of the human kind—the law whereby man is man, as distinguished from the baser kinds, is brought up, and worked out, and unfolded in all its detail, from the bosom of the universal law—is brought down from its barren height of isolation, and planted in the universal rule of being, in the universal law of kinds and essence. This double nature of good, as it is specifically developed in man, not as humanity only, for man is not limited to his kind in his intelligence, or in his will, or in his affections,—this double nature of good, as it is developed in man, with his contemplative, and moral, and religious grasp of a larger whole than his particular and private nature can comprehend—with his large discourse looking before and after, on the one hand, and his blind instincts, and his narrow isolating senses on the other—with that distinctive human nature on the one hand, whereby he does, in some sort, comprehend the world, and not intellectually only—that nature whereby 'the world is set in his heart,' and not in his mind only—that nature which by the law of advancement to the perfection of his form, he struggles to ascend to—that, on the one hand, and that whereby he is kindred with the lower natures on the other, swayed by a gosling's instinct, held down to the level of the pettiest, basest kinds, forbidden to ascend to his own distinctive excellence, allied with species who have no such intelligent outgoing from particulars, who cannot grasp the common, whose sphere nature herself has narrowed and walled in,—these two universal natures of good, and all the passion and affection which lie on that tempestuous border line where they blend in the human, and fill the earth with the tragedy of their confusion,—this two-fold nature, and its tragic blending, and its true specific human development, whereby man is man, and not degenerate, lies discriminated in all these plays, tracked through all their wealth of observation, through all their characterization, through all their mirth, through all their tempests of passion, with a line so firm, that only the instrument of the New Science could have graven it.

Of all the sciences, Policy is the most immersed in matter, and the hardliest reduced to axiom'; but setting out from that which is constant and universal in nature, this philosopher is not afraid to undertake it; and, indeed, that is what he is bent on; for unless those universal, historical principles, which he has taken so much pains to exhibit to us clearly in their abstract form, 'terminate in matter and construction according to the true definitions, they are speculative and of little use.' The termination of them in matter, and the new construction according to true definitions, is the business here. This, which is the hardliest reduced to axiom of any, is that which lies collected on the Inductive Tables here, cleared of all that interferes with the result; and the axiom of practice, which is the 'second vintage' of the New Machine, is expressed before our eyes. 'For that which in speculative philosophy corresponds to the cause, in practical philosophy becomes the rule.'

He starts here, with this grand advantage which no other political philosopher or reformer had ever had before; he has the true definition in his hands to begin with; not the specific and futile notions with which the human mind, shut up within itself, seeks to comprehend and predict and order all, but the solid actual universals that the mind of man, by the combination and scientific balance of its faculties, is able to ascend to. He has in his hands, to begin with, the causes that are universal and constant in nature, with which all the historical phenomena are convertible,—the motives from which all movement proceeds, the true original simple powers,—the unknown, into which all the variety of the known is resolvable, or rather the known into which all the variety of the unknown is resolvable; the forms 'which are always present when the particular nature is present, and universally attest that presence; which are always absent when the particular nature is absent, and universally attest that absence; which always increase as the particular nature increases; which always decrease as the particular nature decreases;' that is the kind of definitions which this philosopher will undertake his moral reform with; that is the kind of idea which the English philosopher lays down for the basis of his politics. Nothing less solid than that will suit the turn of his genius, either in speculation or practice. He does full justice to the discoveries of the old Greek philosophers, whose speculation had controlled, not the speculation only, but all the practical doctrine of the world, from their time to his. He saw from what height of genius they achieved their command; but that was two thousand years before, and that was in the south east corner of Europe; and when the Modern Europe began to think for itself, it was found that the Greeks could not give the law any longer. It was found that the English notions at least, and the Greek notions of things in general differed very materially—essentially—when they came to be put on paper. When the 'representative men' of those two corners of Europe, and of those two so widely separated ages of the human advancement, came to discourse together from their 'cliffs' and compare notes, across that sea of lesser minds, the most remarkable differences, indeed, began to be perceptible at once, though the world has not yet begun to appreciate them. It was a difference that was expected to tell on the common mind, for a time, principally in its 'effects.' Everybody, the learned and the unlearned, understands now, that after the modern survey was taken, new practical directions were issued at once. Orders came down for an immediate suspension of those former rules of philosophy, and the ship was laid on a new course. 'Plato,' says the new philosopher, 'as one that had a wit of elevation situate upon a cliff, did descry that forms are the true object of knowledge,' that was his discovery,—'but lost the fruit of that opinion by'—shutting himself up, in short, in his own abstract contemplations, in his little world of man, and getting out his theory of the universe, before hand, from these; instead of applying himself practically and modestly to the observation of that universe, in which man's part is so humble. 'Vain man,' says our oldest Poet, 'vain man would be wise, who is born like a wild ass's colt.'

But let us take a specimen of the manner in which the propounder of the New Ideal Philosophy 'comes to particulars,' with this quite new kind of IDEAS, and we shall find that they were designed to take in some of those things in heaven and earth that were omitted, or not dreampt of in the others,—which were not included in the 'idols.' He tells us plainly that these are the ideas with which he is going to unravel the most delicate questions; but he is willing to entertain his immediate audience, and propitiate the world generally, by trying them, or rather giving orders to have them tried, on other things first. He does not pride himself very much on anything which he has done, or is able to do in these departments of inquiry from which his instances are here taken, and he says, in this connection:—'We do not, however, deny that other instances can perhaps be added.' In order to arrive at his doctrine of practice in general, he begins after the scientific method, not with the study of any one kind of actions only, he begins by collecting the rules of action in general. By observation of species he seeks to ascend to the principles common to them. And he comes to us with a carefully prepared scheme of the 'elementary motions,'—outlined, and enriched with such observations as he and his school have been able to make under the disadvantages of that beginning. 'The motions of bodies,' he observes, 'are compounded, decomposed and combined, no less than the bodies themselves,' and he directs the attention of the student, who has his eye on practice, with great emphasis, to those instances which he calls 'instances of predominance,'—'instances which point out the predominance and submission of powers, compared' [not in abstract contemplation but in action,] 'compared with each other, and which,' [not in books but in action,]—'which is the more energetic and superior, or more weak and inferior.'

'These "elementary notions" direct and are directed by each other, according to their strength,—quantity, excitement, concussion, or the assistance, or impediments they meet with. For instance, some magnets support iron sixty times their own weight; so far does the motion of lesser congregation predominate over the greater, but if the weight be increased it yields.'

[We must observe, that he is speaking here of 'the motions, tendencies, and active powers which are most universal in nature,' for the purpose of suggesting rules of practice which apply as widely; though he keeps, with the intimation above quoted, principally to this class of instances.] 'A lever of a certain strength will raise a given weight, and so far the notion of liberty predominates over that of the greater congregation; but if the weight be greater, the former motion yields. A piece of leather, stretched to a certain point, does not break, and so far the motion of continuity predominates' [for it is the question of predominance, and dominance, and domineering, and lordships, and liberties, of one kind and another, that he is handling]—'so far the motion of continuity predominates over that of tension; but if the tension be greater, the leather breaks, and the motion of continuity yields. A certain quantity of water flows through a chink, and so far the motion of greater congregation predominates over that of continuity; but if the chink be smaller, it yields. If a musket be charged with ball and powdered sulphur only, and the fire be applied, the ball is not discharged, in which case the motion of greater congregation overcomes that of matter; but when gunpowder is used, the motion of matter in the sulphur predominates, being assisted by that motion, and the motion of avoidance in the nitre; and so of the rest.'

Our more recent chemists would, of course, be inclined to criticise that explanation; but, in some respects, it is better than theirs; and it answers well enough the purpose for which it was introduced there, and for which it is introduced here also. For this is the initiative of the great inquiry into 'the WRESTLING INSTANCES,' and the 'instances of PREDOMINANCE' in general, 'such as point out the predominance of powers, compared with each other, and which of them is the more energetic and SUPERIOR, or more weak and INFERIOR'; and though this class of instances is valued chiefly for its illustration of another in this system of learning, where things are valued in proportion to their usefulness, they are not sought for as similitudes merely; they are produced by one who regards them as 'the same footsteps of nature, treading in different substances,' and leaving the foot-print of universal axioms; and this is a class of instances which he particularly recommends to inquiry. 'For wrestling instances, which show the predominance of powers, and in what manner and proportion they predominate and yield, must be searched for with active and industrious diligence.'

'The method and nature of this yielding' [of this yielding—SUBJECTION is the question] 'must also be diligently examined; as, for instance, whether the motions' ['of liberty'] 'completely cease, or exert themselves, but are constrained; for in all bodies with which we are acquainted, there is no real, but an apparent rest, either in the whole, or in the parts. This apparent rest is occasioned either by equilibrium' [as in the case of Hamlet, as well as in that of some others whose acts were suspended, and whose wills were arrested then, by considerations not less comprehensive than his]—'either by equilibrium, or by the absolute predominance of motions. By equilibrium, as in the scales of the balance, which rest if the weight be equal. By predominance, as in perforated jars, in which the water rests, and is prevented from falling by the predominance of the motion of CONNECTION.'

'It is, however, to be observed (as we have said before), how far the yielding motions exert themselves. For, if a man be held stretched out on the ground against his WILL, with arms and legs bound down, or otherwise confined'—[as the Duke of Kent's were, for instance]—'and yet strive with all his power to get up, the struggle is not the less, though ineffectual. The real state of the case' [namely, whether the yielding motion be, as it were, annihilated by the predominance, or there be rather a continued, though an invisible effort] 'will perhaps appear in the CONCURRENCE of MOTIONS, although it escape our notice in their conflict.' So delicately must philosophy needs be conveyed in a certain stage of a certain class of wrestling instances, where a combination of powers hostile to science produces an 'absolute predominance' of powers, and it is necessary that the yielding motion should at least appear to be 'as it were, annihilated'; though, of course, that need not hinder the invisible effort at all. 'For on account of the rawness and unskilfulness of the hands through which they pass,' there is no difficulty in inserting such intimations as to the latitude of the axioms which these particular instances adduced here, and 'others which might perhaps be added,' are expected to yield. This is an instance of the freedom with which philosophical views on certain subjects are continually addressed in these times, to that immediate audience of the few 'who will perhaps see farther into them than the common reader,' and to those who shall hereafter apply to the philosophy issued under such conditions—the conditions above described, that key of 'Times,' which the author of it has taken pains to leave for that purpose. But the question of 'predominance, which makes our present subject,' is not yet sufficiently indicated. There are more and less powerful motives concerned in this wrestling instance, as he goes on to demonstrate.

'THE RULES of such instances of predominance as occur should be collected, such as the following'—and the rule which he gives, by way of a specimen of these rules, is a very important one for a statesman to have, and it is one which the philosopher has himself 'collected' from such instances as occurred—'The more general the desired advantage is, the stronger will be the motive. The motion of connection, for instance, which relates to the intercourse of the parts of the universe, is more powerful than that of gravity, which relates to the intercourse of dense bodies. Again; the desire of a private good does not, in general, prevail against that of a public one, except where the quantities are small' [it is the general law he is propounding here; and the exception, the anomaly, is that which he has to note]; 'would that such were the case in civil matters.'

But that application to 'civil matters,' which the statesman, propounding in his own person this newly-collected knowledge of the actual historic forces, as a new and immeasurable source of relief to the human estate,—that application, which he could only make here in these side-long glances, is made in the Play without any difficulty at all. These instances, which he produces here in his professed work of science, are produced as illustrations of the kind of inquiry which he is going to bring to bear, with all the force and subtlety of his genius, on the powers of nature, as manifested in the individual human nature, and in those unions and aggregations to which it tends—those larger wholes and greater congregations, which parliaments, and pulpits, and play-houses, and books, were forbidden then, on pain of death and torture and ignominy, to meddle with. Here, he tells us, he finds it to the purpose to select 'suggestive instances, such as point out that which is advantageous to mankind'; 'and it is a part of science to make judicious inquiries and wishes.'

These instances, which he produces here, are searching; but they are none too searching for his purpose. They do not come any nearer to nature than those others which he is prepared to add to them. The treatment is not any more radical and subtle here than it is in those instances in which 'he comes to particulars,' under the pretence of play and pastime, in other departments,—those in which the judicious inquiry into the laws of the actual forces promises to yield rules 'the most generally useful to mankind.'

This is the philosophy precisely which underlies all this Play,—this Play, in which the great question, not yet ready for the handling of the unlearned, but ripe already for scientific treatment,—the question of the wrestling forces,—the question of the subjection and predominance of powers,—the question of the combination and opposition of forces in those arrested motions which make states, is so boldly handled. Those arrested motions, where the rest is only apparent, not real—where the 'yielding' forces are only, as it were, annihilated, whether by equilibrium of forces, or an absolute predominance, but biding their time, ready to burst their bonds and renew their wrestling, ready to show themselves, not as 'subjects,' but predominators—not as states, but revolutions. The science 'that ends in matter and new constructions'—new construction, 'according to true definitions,' is what these citizens, whom this Poet has called up from their horizontal position by way of anticipation, are already, under his instructions, boldly clamouring for. Constructions in which these very rules and axioms, these scientific certainties, are taken into the account, are what these men, whom this Magician has set upon their feet here, whose lips he has opened and whose arms he has unbound with the magic of his art, are going to have before they lie down again, or, at least, before they make a comfortable state for any one to trample on, though they may, perhaps, for a time seem, 'as it were, annihilated.'

These true forms, these real definitions, this new kind of ideas, these new motions, new in philosophy, new in human speech, old in natures,—written in her book ere man was,—these universal, elementary, original motions, which he is exhibiting here in the philosophic treatise, under cover of a certain class of instances, are the very ones which he is tracking here in the Play, into all the business of the state. This is that same new thread which we saw there in the grave philosophic warp, with here and there a little space filled in, not with the most brilliant filling; enough, however, to show that it was meant to be filled, and, to the careful eye,—how. But here it is the more chosen substance; and every point of this illustrious web is made of its involutions,—is a point of 'illustration.'

Yes, here he is again. Here he is at last, in that promised field of his labours,—that field of 'noblest subjects,' for the culture of which he will have all nature put under contribution; here he is at large, 'making what work he pleases.' He who is content to talk from his chair of professional learning of 'pieces of leather,' and their unions, and bid his pupil note and 'consider well' that mysterious, unknown, unexplored power in nature, which holds their particles together, in its wrestling with its opposite; and where it ceases, or seems to cease; where that obstinate freedom and predominance is vanquished, and by what rules and means; he who finds in 'water,' arrested 'in perforated jars,' or 'flowing through a chink,' or resisting gravity, if the chink be smaller, or in the balanced 'scales,' with their apparent rest, the wrestling forces of all nature,—the weaker enslaved, but there,—not annihilated; he who saw in the little magnet, beckoning and holding those dense palpable masses, or in the lever, assisted by human hands, vanquishing its mighty opposite, things that old philosophies had not dreamt of,—reports of mysteries,—revelations for those who have the key,—words from that book of creative power, words from that living Word, which he must study who would have his vision of God fulfilled, who would make of his 'good news' something more than a Poet's prophecy. He who found in the peaceful nitre, in the harmless sulphur, in the saltpetre, 'villanous' not yet, in the impotence of fire and sulphur, combining in vain against the motion of the resisting ball,—not less real to his eye, because not apparent,—or in the villanous compound itself, while yet the spark is wanting,—'rules' for other 'wrestling instances,' for other combinations, where the motion of inertia was also to be overcome; requiring organized movements, analyses, and combinations of forces, not less but more scientifically artistic,—rules for the enlargement of forces, waiting but their spark, then, to demonstrate, with more fearful explosions, their expansibility, threatening 'to lay all flat.'

For here, too, the mystic, unknown, occult powers, the unreported actualities, are working still, in obedience to their orders, which they had not from man, and taking no note of his. 'For man, as the interpreter of nature, does, and understands as much as his observations ON THE ORDER OF THINGS, or THE MIND, permits him, and neither knows nor is capable of more.' 'Man, while operating, can only apply or withdraw natural bodies. NATURE INTERNALLY PERFORMS THE REST'; and 'the syllogism forces assent, but not things.'

Great things this Interpreter promises to man from these observations and interpretations, which he and his company are ordering; great things he promises from the application of this new method of learning to this department of man's want; because those vague popular notions—those spontaneous but deep-rooted beliefs in man—those confused, perplexed terms, with which he seeks to articulate them, and not those acts which make up his life only—are out of nature, and all resolvable into higher terms, and require to be returned into these before man can work with them to purpose.

Great news for man he brings; the powers which are working in the human life, and not those which are working without it only, are working in obedience to laws. Great things he promises, because the facts of human life are determined by forces which admit of scientific definition, and are capable of being reduced to axioms. Great things he promises, for these distinctive phenomena of human life, to their most artificial complication, are all out of the universal nature, and struggling already of themselves instinctively towards the scientific solution, already 'anticipating' science, and invoking her, and waiting and watching for her coming.

Good news the scientific reporter, in his turn, brings in also; good news for the state, good news for man; confirmations of reports indited beforehand; confirmations, from the universal scriptures, of the revelation of the divine in the human. Good news, because that law of the greater whole, which is the worthier—that law of the common-weal, which is the human law—that law which in man is reason and conscience, is in the nature of things, and not in man only—nay, not in man as yet, but prefigured only—his ideal; his true form—not in man, who 'IS' not, but 'becoming.'

But in tracking these universal laws of being, this constitution of things in general into the human constitution—in tracing these universal definitions into the specific terms of human life—the clearing up of the spontaneous notions and beliefs which the mind of man shut up to itself yields—the criticism on the terms which pre-occupy this ground is of course inevitable, whether expressed or not, and is indeed no unimportant part of the result. For this is a philosophy in which even 'the most vulgar and casual opinions are something more than nothing in nature.'

This Play of the Common-weal and its scientific cure, in which the question of the true NOBILITY is so deeply inwrought throughout, is indeed but the filling up of that sketch of the constitution of man which we find on another page—that constitution whereby man, as man, is part and member of a common-weal—that constitution whereby his relation to the common-weal is essential to the perfection of his individual nature, and that highest good of it which is conservation with advancement—that constitution whereby the highest good of the particular and private nature, that which bids defiance to the blows of fortune, comprehends necessarily the good of the whole in its intention. ('For neither can a man understand VIRTUE without relation to society, nor DUTY without an inward disposition.') And that is the reason that the question of 'the government of every man over himself,' and the predominance of powers, and the wrestling of them in 'the little state of man'—the question as to which is 'nobler'—comes to be connected with the question of civil government so closely. That is the reason that this doctrine of virtue and state comes to us conjoined; that is the reason that we find this question of the consulship, and the question of heroism and personal greatness, the question of the true nobility, forming so prominent a feature in the Play of the Common-weal, inwoven throughout with the question of its cure.

'Constructions according to true definitions' make the end here. The definition is, of course, the necessary preliminary to such constructions: it does not in itself suffice. Mere science does not avail here. Scientific ARTS, scientific INSTITUTIONS of regimen and culture and cure, make the essential conditions of success in this enterprise. But we want the light of 'the true definitions' to begin with. There is no use in revolutions till we have it; and as for empirical institutions, mankind has seen the best of them;—we are perishing in their decay, dying piecemeal, going off into a race of ostriches, or something of that nature—or threatened with becoming mere petrifactions, mineral specimens of what we have been, preserved, perhaps, to adorn the museums of some future species, gifted with better faculties for maintaining itself. It is time for a change of some sort, for the worse or the better, when we get habitually, and by a social rule, water for milk, brickdust for chocolate, silex for butter, and minerals of one kind and another for bread; when our drugs give the lie to science; when mustard refuses to 'counter-irritate,' and sugar has ceased to be sweet, and pepper, to say nothing of 'ginger' is no longer 'hot in the mouth.' The question in speculative philosophy at present is—

'Why all these things change from their ordinance,
Their natures, and pre-formed faculties,
To monstrous quality.'

—'There's something in this more than natural,
—if philosophy could find it out!

And what we want in practical philosophy when it comes to this, is a new kind of enchantments, with capacities large enough to swallow up these, as the rod of Moses swallowed up the rods of the Egyptians. That was a good test of authority; and nothing short of that will answer our present purpose; when not that which makes life desirable only, but life itself is assailed, and in so comprehensive a manner, the revolutionary point of sufferance and stolidity is reached. We cannot stay to reason it thus and thus with 'the garotte' about our throats: the scientific enchantments will have to be tried now, tried here also. Now that we have 'found out' oxygen and hydrogen, and do not expect to alter their ways of proceeding by any epithets that we may apply to them, or any kind of hocus-pocus that we may practise on them, it is time to see what gen, or genus it is, that proceeds in these departments in so successful a manner, and with so little regard to our exorcisms; and the mere calling of names, which indicate in a general way the unquestionable fact of a degeneracy, is of no use, for that has been thoroughly tried already.

The experiment in the 'common logic,' as Lord Bacon calls it, has been a very long and patient one; the historical result is, that it forces assent, and not things.

The question here is not of divinity, as some might suppose. There is no question about that. Nobody need be troubled about that. It does not depend on this, or that man's arguments, happily. The true divinity, the true inspiration, is of that which was and shall be. Its foundations are laid,—its perennial source is found, not in the soul of man, not in the constitution of the mind of man only, but in the nature of things, and in the universal laws of being. The true divinity strikes its foundations to the universal granite; it is built on 'that rock where philosophy and divinity join close;' and heaven and earth may pass, but not that.

The question here is of logic. The question is between Lord Bacon and Aristotle, and which of these two thrones and dominions in speculation and practice the moderns are disposed on the whole to give their suffrages to, in this most vital department of human practice, in this most vital common human concern and interest. The question is of these demoniacal agencies that are at large now upon this planet—on both sides of it—going about with 'tickets of leave,' of one kind and another; for the logic that we employ in this department still, though it has been driven, with hooting, out of every other, and the rude systems of metaphysics which it sustains, do not take hold of these things. They pay no attention to our present method of reasoning about them. There is no objection to syllogisms, as Lord Bacon concedes;—they are very useful in their proper place. The difficulty is, that the subtlety of nature in general, as exhibited in that result which we call fact, far surpasses the subtlety of nature, when developed within that limited sphere, which the mind of man makes; and nature is much more than a match for him, when he throws himself upon his own internal gifts of ratiocination, and undertakes to dictate to the universe. The difficulty is just this;—here we have it in a nut-shell, as we are apt to get it in Lord Bacon's aphorisms.

'The syllogism consists of propositions; these of words. Words are the signs of notions: notions represent things:' [If these last then]—'if our notions are fantastical, the whole structure falls to the ground. But [they are] they are, for the most part, improperly abstracted, and deduced from things,' and that is the difficulty which this new method of learning, propounded in connection with this so radical criticism of the old one, undertakes to remedy. For there are just two methods of learning, as he goes on to tell us, with increasing, but cautious, amplifications. The false method lays down from the very outset some abstract and useless generalities,—the other, gradually rises to those principles which are really the most common in nature. 'Axioms determined on in argument, can never assist in the discovery of new effects, for the subtlety of nature is vastly superior to that of argument. But axioms properly and regularly abstracted from particulars, easily point out and define NEW PARTICULARS, and impart activity to the sciences.'

'We are wont to call that human reasoning which we apply to nature, THE ANTICIPATION OF NATURE (as being rash and premature), and that which is properly deduced from THINGS, THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURE.'—(A radical distinction, which it is the first business of the new machine of the mind to establish). 'Anticipations are sufficiently powerful in producing unanimity; for if men were all to become even uniformly mad, they might agree tolerably well with each other,' (but not with nature; there's the trouble; that is the assent that is wanting).

'In sciences founded upon opinions and dogmas, it is right to make use of anticipations and logic, if you wish to force assent, and not things.'

The difference, then, between the first hasty conceptions and rude theories of the nature of things,—the difference between the preconceptions which make the first steps of the human mind towards the attainment of truth, and those conceptions and axioms which are properly abstracted from things, and which correspond to their natures, is the difference in which science begins.

And we shall find that the truths of science in this department of it, which makes our present subject are quite as new, quite as far out of the road of common opinion, and quite as unattainable by the old method of learning, as those truths with which science has already overpowered the popular notions and theories in those departments in which its powers have been already tested.

These rude natural products of the human understanding, while it is yet undisciplined by the knowledge of nature in general, which in their broadest range proceed from the human speciality, and are therefore liable to an exterior criticism; these first words and natural beliefs of men, through all their range, from the a priori conceptions of the schools, down to the most narrow and vulgar preconceptions and prejudices of the unlearned, the author of the 'Novum Organum,' and of the 'Advancement of Learning,' by a bold and dexterous sweep, puts quietly into one category, under the seemingly fanciful,—but, considering the time, none too fanciful,—designation of 'the Idols';—(he knew, indeed, that the original of the term would suggest to the scholar a more literal reading),—'the Idols of the Tribe, of the Den, of the Market, and of the Theatre,' as he sees reason—scientific, as well as rhetorical reason,—for dividing and distinguishing them. But under that common designation of images, and false ones too, he subjects them to a common criticism, in behalf of that mighty hitherto unknown, unsought, universality, which is all particulars—which is more universal than the notions of men, and transcends the grasp of their beliefs and pre-judgments;—that universal fact which men are brought in contact with, in all their doing, and in all their suffering, whether pleasurable or painful. That universal, actual fact, whose science philosophy has hitherto set aside, in favour of its own pre-notions, as a thing not worth taking into the account,—that mystic, occult, unfathomed fact, that is able to assert itself in the face of our most authoritative pre-notions, whose science, under the vulgar name of experience, all the learning of the world had till then made over with a scorn ineffable to the cultivation of the unlearned. Under that despised name which the old philosophy had omitted in its chart, the new perceived that the ground lay, and made all sail thither.

We cannot expect to find then any of those old terms and definitions included in the trunk of the new system, which is science. None of those airy fruits that grow on the branches which those old roots of a false metaphysics must needs nurture,—none of those apples of Sodom which these have mocked us with so long, shall the true seeker find on these boughs. The man of science does not, indeed, care to displace those terms in the popular dialect here, any more than the chemist or the botanist will insist on reforming the ordinary speech of men with their truer language in the fields they occupy. The new Logician and Metaphysician will himself, indeed, make use of these same terms, with a hint to 'men of understanding,' perhaps, as to the sense in which he uses them.

Incorporated into a system of learning on which much human labour has been bestowed, they may even serve some good practical purposes under certain conditions of social advancement. And besides, they are useful for adorning discourse, and furnish abundance of rhetorical material. Above all, they are invaluable to the scholastic controversialists, and the new philosopher will not undertake to displace them in these fields. He steadfastly refuses to come into any collision with them. He leaves them to take their way without. He makes them over to the vulgar, and to those old-fashioned schools of logic and metaphysics, whose endless web is spun out of them. But when the question is of practice, that is another thing. It is the scientific word that is wanting here. That is the word which in his school he will undertake to teach.

When it comes to practice, professional practice, like the botanist and the chemist, he will make his own terms. He has a machine expressly for that purpose, by which new terms are framed and turned out in exact accordance with the nature of things. He does not wish to quarrel with any one, but in the way of his profession, he will have none of those old confused terms thrust upon him. He will examine them, and analyze them; and all,—all that is in them,—all, and more, will be in his; but scientifically cleared, 'divided with the mind, that divine fire,' and clothed with power.

And it is just as impossible that those changes for the human relief which the propounder of the New Logic propounded as its chief end, should ever be effected by means of the popular terms which our metaphysicians are still allowed to retain in the highest fields of professional practice, as it would have been to effect those lesser reforms which this logic has already achieved, if those old elementary terms, earth, fire, air, water,—terms which antiquity thought fine enough; which passed the muster of the ancient schools without suspicion, had never to this hour been analyzed.

It is just as easy to suppose that we could have had our magnetic telegraphs, and daguerreotypes, and our new Materia Medica, and all the new inventions of modern science for man's relief, if the terms which were simple terms in the vocabulary of Aristotle and Pliny, had never been tested with the edge of the New Machine, and divided with its divine fire, if they had not ceased to be in the schools at least elementary; it is just as easy to suppose this, as it is to suppose that the true and nobler ends of science can ever be attained, so long as the powers that are actual in our human life, which are still at large in all their blind instinctive demoniacal strength there, which still go abroad free-footed, unfettered of science there, while we chain the lightning, and send it on our errands,—so long as these still slip through the ring of our airy 'words,' still riot in the freedom of our large generalizations, our sublime abstractions,— so long as a mere human word-ology is suffered to remain here, clogging all with its deadly impotence,—keeping out the true generalizations with their grappling-hooks on the particulars, —the creative word of art which man learns from the creating wisdom, —the word to which rude nature bows anew,—the word which is Power.

But while the world is resounding with those new relations to the powers of nature which the science of nature has established in other fields, in that department of it, which its Founder tells us is 'the end and term of Natural Science in the intention of man,' in that department of it to which his labor was directed; we are still given over to the inventions of Aristotle, applied to those rude conceptions and theories of the nature of things which the unscientific ages have left to us. Here we have still the loose generalization, the untested affirmation, the arrogant pre-conception, the dogmatic assumption. Here we have the mere phenomena of the human speciality put forward as science, without any attempt to find their genera,—to trace them to that which is more known to nature, so as to connect them practically with the diversity and opposition, which the actual conditions of practice present.

We have not, in short, the scientific language here yet. The vices and the virtues do not understand the names by which we call them, and undertake to command them. Those are not the names in that 'infinite book of secrecy' which they were taught in. They find a more potent order there.

And thus it is, that the demons of human life go abroad here still, impervious alike to our banning and our blessing. The powers of nature which are included in the human nature,—the powers which in this specific form of them we are undertaking to manage with these vulgar generalizations, tacked together with the Aristotelian logic—these powers are no more amenable to any such treatment in this form, than they are in those other forms, in which we are learning to approach them with another vocabulary.

The forces which are developed in the human life will not answer to the names by which we call them here, any more than the lightning would answer to the old Magician's incantation,—any more than it would have come if the old Logician had called it by his name,—which was just as good as the name—and no better, than the name, which the priest of Baal gave it,—any more than it would have come, if the old Logician had undertaken to fetch it, with the harness of his syllogism.

But when the new Logician, who was the new Magician, came, with 'the part operative' of his speculation; with his 'New Machine,' with the rod of his new definition, with the staff of his genera and species,—when the right name was found for it, it heard, it heard afar, it heard in its heaven and came. It came fast enough then. It was 'asleep,' but it awaked. It was 'taking a journey' but it came. There was no affectation of the graces of the gods when the new interpreter and prophet of nature, who belonged to the new order of Interpreters, sent up his little messenger, without any pomp or ceremony, or 'windy suspiration of forced breath,' and fetched it.

But that was an Occidental philosopher, one of the race who like to see effects of some kind, when there is nothing in the field to forbid it. That was one of the Doctors who are called in this system 'Interpreters of nature,' to distinguish them from those who 'rashly anticipate' it. He did not make faces, and cut himself with knives and lances, after a prescribed manner, and prophesy until evening, though there was no voice, nor any to answer, nor any that regarded. He knew that that god at least would not stop on his journey; or if, peradventure, he slept, would not be wakened by any such process.

And the farther the world proceeds on that 'new road' it is travelling at present, the more the demand will be heard in this quarter, for an adaptation of instrumentalities to the advanced, and advancing ages of modern learning and civilization, and to that more severe and exacting genius of the occidental races, that keener and more subtle, and practical genius, from whose larger requisitions and powers this advancement proceeds.

CHAPTER X.

THE CURE—PLAN OF INNOVATION—NEW CONSTRUCTIONS.

'Unless these end in matter, and constructions according to true definitions, they are speculative, and of little use.'—Novum Organum.

Difficult, then, as the problem of Civil Government appeared to the eye of the scientific philosopher, and threatening and appalling as were those immediate aspects of it which it presented at that moment, he does not despair of the State. Even on the verge of that momentous political and social crisis, 'though he does not need to go to heaven to predict great revolutions and imminent changes,' 'he thinks he sees ways to save us,' and he finds in his new science of Man the ultimate solution of that problem.

That particular and private nature which is in all men, let them re-name themselves by what names they will, that particular and private nature which intends always the individual and private good, has in itself 'an incident towards the good of society,' which it may use as means,—which it must use, if highly successful,—as means to its end. Even in this, when science has enlightened it, and it is impelled by blind and unsuccessful instinct no longer, the man of science finds a place where a pillar of the true state can be planted; even here the scientific light lays bare, in the actualities of the human constitution, a foundation-stone,—a stone that does not crumble—a stone that does not roll, which the state that shall stand must rest on.

Even that 'active good,' which impels 'the troublers of the world, such as was Lucius Sylla, and infinite others in smaller model,'—that principle which impels the particular nature to leave its signature on other things,—on the state, on the world, if it can,—though it is its own end, and though it is apt, when armed with those singular powers for 'effecting its good will,' which are represented in the hero of this action, to lead to results of the kind which this piece represents,—this is the principle in man which seeks an individual immortality, and works of immortal worth for man are its natural and selectest means.

But that is not all. The bettering of itself, the perfection of its own form, is, by the constitution of things, a force, a motive, an actual 'power in everything that moves.' This is one of the primal, universal, natural motions. It is in the universal creative stamp of things; and strong as that is, the rock on which here, too, the hope of science rests—strong as that is, the pillar of the state, which here, too, it will rear. For to man the highest 'passive good,' and this, too, is of the good which is 'private and particular,' is, constitutionally, that whereby 'the conscience of good intentions, however succeeding, is a more continual joy to his nature than all the provision—the most luxurious provision—which can be made for security and repose,—whereby the mere empirical experimenter in good will count it a higher felicity to fail in good and virtuous ends towards the public, than to attain the most envied success limited to his particular.

Thus, even in these decried 'private' motives, which actuate all men—these universal natural instincts, which impel men yet more intensely, by the concentration of the larger sensibility, and the faculty of the nobler nature of their species, to seek their own private good,—even in these forces, which, unenlightened and uncounterbalanced, tend in man to war and social dissolution, or 'monstrous' social combination,—even in these, the scientific eye perceives the basis of new structures, 'constructions according to true definitions,' in which all the ends that nature in man grasps and aspires to, shall be artistically comprehended and attained.

But this is only the beginning of the scientific politician's 'hope.' This is but a collateral aid, an incidental assistance. This is the place on his ground-plan for the buttresses of the pile he will rear. There is an unborrowed foundation, there is an internal support for the state in man. For along with that particular and private nature of good, there is another in all men;—there is another motive, which respects and beholds the good of society, not mediately, but directly as its end,—which embraces in its intention 'the form of human nature, whereof we are members and portions, and not—not—our own proper, individual form'; and this is the good 'which is in degree the greater and the worthier, because it tends to the conservation and advancement of a more general form.' And this, also, is an actual force in man, proceeding from the universal nature of things and original in that, not in him. This, also, is in the primeval creative stamp of things; and here, also, the science of the interpretation of nature finds in the constitution of man, and in the nature of things, the foundations of the true state ready to its hand; and hewn, all hewn and cut, and joined with nature's own true and cunning hand ere man was, the everlasting pillars of the common-weal.

But in man this law, also,—this law chiefly,—has its special, essentially special, development. 'It is much more impressed on man, if he de-generate not.' Great buildings have been reared on this foundation already; great buildings, old and time-honoured, stand on it. The history of human nature is glorious, even in its degeneracy, with the exhibition of this larger, nobler form of humanity asserting itself, triumphing over the intensities of the narrower motivity. It is a species in which the organic law transcends the individual, and embraces the kind; it is a constitution of nature, in which those who seek the good of the kind, and subordinate the private nature to that, are noble, and chief. It is a species in which the law of the common-weal is for ever present to the private nature, as the law of its own being, requiring, under the pains and penalties of the universal laws of being, subjection.

Science cannot originate new forces in nature. 'Man, while operating, can only apply or withdraw natural forces. Nature, internally, performs the rest.' But here are the very forces that we want. If man were, indeed, naturally and constitutionally, that mere species of 'vermin' which, under certain modes of culture, with great facility he becomes, there would be no use in spending words upon this subject. Science could not undertake the common-weal in that case. If nature's word had been here dissolution, isolation, single intention in the parts and members of that body that science sought to frame, what word of creative art could she pronounce, what bonds of life could she find, what breath of God could she boast, that she should think to frame of such material the body politic, the organic whole, the living, free, harmonious, triumphant common-weal.

But here are the very forces that we want, blindly moving, moving in the dark, left to intuition and instinct, where nature had provided reason, and required science and scientific art. That has not been tried. And that is why this question of the state, dark as it is, portentous, hopeless as its aspects are, if we limit the survey to our present aids and instrumentalities, is already, to the eye of science, kindling with the aurora of unimagined change, advancements to the heights of man's felicity, that shall dim the airy portraiture of poets' visions, that shall outgo here, too, the world's young dreams with its scientific reality.

There has been no help from science in this field hitherto. The proceeding of the world has been instinctive and empirical thus far, in the attainment of the ends which the complex nature of man requires him to seek. Men have been driven, and swayed hither and thither, by these different and apparently contradictory aims, without any science of the forces that actuated them. Those ends these forces will seek,—'it is their nature to,'—whether in man, or in any other form in which they are incorporated. There's no amount of declamation that is ever going to stop them. The power that is in everything that moves, the forces of universal nature are concerned in the acts that we deprecate and cry out upon. It is the original constitution of things, as it was settled in that House of Commons, to whose acts the memory of Man runneth not, that is concerned in these demonstrations; and philosophy requires that whatever else we do, we should avoid, by all means, coming into any collision with those statutes. 'We must so order it,' says Michael of the Mountain, quoting in this case from antiquity—'we must so order it, as by no means to contend with universal nature.' 'To attempt to kick against natural necessity,' he says in his own name, and in his own peculiar and more impressive method of philosophic instruction—'to attempt to kick against natural necessity, is to represent the folly of Ctesiphon, who undertook to outkick his mule.' We must begin by distinguishing 'what is in our power, and what not,' says the author of the Advancement of Learning, applying that universal rule of practice to our present subject.

Here, then, carefully reduced to their most comprehensive form, traced to the height of universal nature, and brought down to the specific nature in man—here, as they lie on the ground of the common nature in man, for the first time scientifically abstracted—are the powers which science has to begin with in this field. The varieties in the species, and the individual differences so remarkable in this kind, are not in this place under consideration. But here is the common nature in this kind, which must make the basis of any permanent universal social constitution for it. Different races will require that their own constitutional differences shall be respected in their social constitutions; and if they be not, for the worse or for the better, look for change. But this is the universal platform that science is clearing here. This is the WORLD that she is concerning herself with here, in the person of that High Priest of hers, who, also, took that to be his business.

Here are these powers in man, then, to begin with. Here is this universal natural predisposition in him, not to subsist, merely, and maintain his form—which is nature's first law, they tell us—but to 'better himself' in some way. As Hamlet expresses it, 'he lacks advancement'; and advancement he will have, or strive to have, if not 'formal and essential,' then 'local.' He is instinctively impelled to it; and in his ignorant attempt to compass that end which nature has prescribed to him, the 'tempest of human life' arises.

The scientific plan will be, not to quarrel with these universal forces, and undertake to found society on their annihilation. Science will count that structure unsafe which is founded on the supposed annihilation of these forces in anything that moves. The man of science knows, that though by the predominance of powers, or by the equilibrium of them, they may be for a time, 'as it were, annihilated,' they are in every creature; and nature in the instincts, though blind, is cunning, and finds ways and means of overcoming barriers, and evading restrictions, and inclines to indemnify herself when once she finds her way again. Instead of quarrelling with these forces, the scientific plan, having respect to the Creating Wisdom in the constitution of man, overlooking them from that height, will thankfully accept them, and make much of them. These are just the motive powers that science has need of; she could not compose her structure without them, which is only the perfecting of the structure which the great Creating Wisdom had already outlined and pre-ordered—not a machine, but a living organic whole.

Science takes this 'piece of work' as she finds him, ready, waiting for the hand of art—imperfect, unfinished, but with the proceeding of nature incorporated in him—with the creative, advancing, perfecting motion, incorporated in him as his essence and law;—imperfect, but with nature working within him for the rest, urging him to self-perfection. She takes him as she finds him, a creature of instinct, but with his large, rich, undeveloped, yet already active nature of reason, and conscience, and religion, already struggling for the mastery, counterbalancing his narrower motivity, holding in check, with nobler intuitions, the error of an instinct which errs in man, because eyes were included in nature's definition of him, as it was written beforehand in her book, her universal book of types and orders—eyes, and not instinct only—'that what he cannot smell out, he may spy into.' 'O'er that art, which you say adds to nature, is an art that nature makes.' The want of this pre-ordered art is the want here still. The war of the unenlightened instincts is raging here still. That is where the difficulty lies. That same patience of investigation with which science has pursued and found out nature elsewhere—that same intense, indefatigable concentration of endeavour, which has been rewarded with such 'magnitude of effects' in other fields—that same, in a higher degree, in more powerful combinations, proportioned to the magnitude and common desirableness of the object, is what is wanting here. It is the instincts that are at fault here,—'the blind instincts, that seeing reason' should 'guide.'

That is where all the jar and confusion of this great storm begins, that 'continues still,' and blasts our lives, in spite of all the spells that we mumble over it, and in spite of all the magic that all our magicians can bring to bear on it. 'Meagre success,' at least, is still the word here. No wonder that the storm continues, under such conditions. No wonder that the world is full of the uproar of this arrested work, this violated intent of nature. She will storm on till we hear her. Woe to those who put themselves in opposition to her, who think to violate her intent and prosper! 'The storm continues,' and it will continue, pronounce on it what incantations we may, so long as the elemental forces of all nature are meeting in our lives, and dashing in blind elemental strength against each other, and the brooding spirit of the social life, the composing spirit of the larger whole, cannot reconcile them, because the voices that are filling the air with the discord of their controversy, and out-toning the noise of this battle with theirs, are crying in one key, 'Let there be darkness here'; because the darkness of the ages of instinct and intuition is held back here, cowering, ashamed, but forbidden to flee away; because the night of human ignorance still covers all this battle-ground, and hides the combatants.

Science is the word here. The Man of the Modern Ages has spoken it, 'and now the times give it proof'; the times in which the methods of earlier ages, in the rapid advancement of learning in other fields, are losing their vitalities, and leaving us without those means of social combination, without those social bonds which the rudest ages of instinct and intuition, which the most barbaric peoples have been able to command. The times give it proof, fearful proof, terrific proof, when the noblest institutions of earlier ages are losing their power to conserve the larger whole; when the conserving faith of earlier ages, with its infinities of forces, is fainting in its struggles, and is not supported; and men set at nought its divine realities, because they have not been translated into their speech and language, and think there is no such thing; and under all the exterior splendours of a material civilization advanced by science, society tends to internal decay, and the primal war of atoms.

To meet the exigencies of a crisis like this, it is not enough to call these powers that are actual in the human nature, but which are not yet reconciled and reduced to their true and natural order—it is not enough at this age of the world, at this stage of human advancement in other fields—to call these forces by some general names which include their oppositions, and to require for want of skill that a part of them shall be annihilated; it is not enough to express a strong disapprobation of the result as it is, and to require, in never-so-authoritative manner, that it shall be otherwise. No matter what names we may use to make that requisition in, no matter under what pains and penalties we require it, the result—whatever we may say to the contrary—the result does not follow. That is not the way. Those who try it, and who continue to try it in the face of no matter what failures, may think it is; but there is a voice mightier than theirs, drowning all their speech, telling us in thunder-tones, that it is not; with arguments that brutes might understand, telling us that it is not!

It is, indeed, no small gain in the rude ages of warring instincts and intuitions, when there is as yet no science to define them, and compare them, and pronounce from its calm height its eternal axioms here—when the world is a camp, and hostilities are deified, and mankind is in arms when all the moral terms are still wrapped in the confusion of the first outgoing of the perplexed, unanalysed human motivity—it is no small gain to get the word of the nobler intuitions outspoken, to get the word of the divine law of man's nature, his essential law pronounced—even in rudest ages overawing, commanding with its awful divinity the intenser motivity of the lesser nature—able to summon, in rudest ages, to its ideal heights, those colossal heroic forms, that cast their long shadows over the tracts of time, to tell us what type it is that humanity aspires to. It is no small gain to get these nobler intuitions outspoken in some voice that commands with its authority the world's ear, or illustrated in some exemplar that arrests the world's eye, and draws the human heart unto it.

It is no small advance in human history, to get the divine authority of those nobler intuitions, which, in man, anticipate speculation, and their right to command the particular motives, recognised in the common speech of men, incorporated in their speculative belief, incorporated in their books of learning, and embalmed in institutions that keep the divine exemplar of the human form for ever in our eyes. It is something. The warring nations war on. The world is in arms still. The rude instincts are not stayed in their intent. They pause, it may be; 'but a roused passion sets them new a-work.' The speckled demons, that the degenerate _angelic _nature breeds, put on the new livery, and go abroad in it rejoicing. New rivers of blood, new seas of carnage, are opened in the new name of peace; new engines of torture, of fiendish wrong, are invented in the new name of love. But it is some gain. There is a new rallying-place on the earth for those who seek truly the higher good; at the foot of the new symbol they recognise each other, they join hand in hand, and the bands of those who wait and watch amid the earth's darkness for the promise, cheer us with their songs. Truths out of the Eternal Book, truths that all hearts lean on in their need, are spoken. Words that shall never pass away, sweet with the immortal hope and perennial joy of life, are always in our ears.

The nations that have contributed to this result in any degree, whether primarily or secondarily, whether they be Syrians or Assyrians, Arabs or Egyptians, wandering or settled, wild or tame; whether they belong to the inferior unanalysing Semitic races, or whether they come of the more richly endowed, but yet youthful, Indo-European stock; whether they be Hebrews or Persians, Greeks or Romans, will always have the world's gratitude. Those to whose intenser conceptions and bolder affirmations, in the rude ages of instinct and spontaneous allegation, it was given to pronounce and put on everlasting record, these primal truths of inspiration,—truths whose divinity all true hearts respond to, may be indeed by their natural intellectual characteristics,—if Semitic must be—totally disqualified by ethnological laws,—hopelessly disqualified—so hopelessly that it is to lose all to put it on them—for the task of commanding, in detail, our modern civilization;—a civilization which has made, already, the rude ethics of these youthful races, when it comes to details, so palpably and grossly inapplicable, that it is an offence to modern sensibility to name—to so much as name—decisions which stand unreversed, without comment, in our books of learning. But that is no reason why we should not take, and thankfully appropriate as the gift of God, all that it was their part to contribute to the great plot of human advancement. We cannot afford to dispense with any such gain. The movement which respects the larger whole, the divine intent incorporates it all.

'Japhet shall dwell in the tents of Shem,' for they are world wide; but woe to him if, in his day, he refuse to build the temple which, in his day, his God will also require of him. Woe to him, if he think to put upon another age and race the tasks which his Task-Master will require of him,—which, with his many gifts, with his chief gifts, with his ten talents, will surely be required of him. More than his fathers' woe upon him—more than that old-world woe, which he, too, remembers, if he think to lean on Asia, the youthful Asia, when his own great world noon-day has come.

'There was violence on the earth in those days, and it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth.' 'Twill come,' says our own poet, prefacing his proposal for a scientific art in the attainment of the chief human ends, and giving his illustrated reasons for it,—

'Twill come [at this rate]
Humanity must, perforce, prey on itself,
Like monsters of the deep.

But what are these?—these new orders,—these new species of nature, defying nature, that we are generating with our arts here now? What are these new varieties to which our kind is tending now? Look at this kind for instance. What are these? Define them. Destroyers, not of their own image in their fellow-man only, not of the image of their kind only,—sacred by natural universal laws,—but of the chosen image of it, the ideal of it, the one in whom the natural love of their kind was by the law of nature concentred,—the wife and the mother,— destroyed not as the wolf destroys its prey, but with ferocity, or with prolonged and studious harm, that it required the human brain to plan and perpetrate. Look at this pale lengthening widening train of their victims. We must look at it. It will never go by till we do. We shall have to look at it, and consider it well; it will lengthen, it will widen till we do:—ghastly, bruised, bleeding, trampled,— trampled it may be, with nailed, booted heel, mother and child together into one grave. But these are common drunkard's wives;—we are inured to this catastrophe, and do not think much of it. But who are these, whom the grave cannot hold; that by God's edict break its bonds and come back, making day hideous, to tell us what the earth could not, would not keep,—to tell us of that other band who died and made no sign? But this is nothing. Here are more. Here are others. What are these? These are not spectres. Their cheeks are red enough. What loathsome thing is this, that we are bringing forth here now with the human face upon it, in whom the heart of the universal nature has expired. These are murderers,—count them—they are all murderers, wholesale murderers, perhaps,—but of what? Of their own helpless, tender, loving, trusting little ones. The wretched children of our time,—alone in wretchedness,—alone in the universe of nature,—who found, where nature promised them a mother's love, the knife, or the more cruel agonizing drug of death. Was there any cause in nature for it? Yes. They did it for the 'burial fee,' perhaps, or for some other cause as good. They had a reason for it. Let our naturalists throw their learning 'to the dogs,' and come this way, and tell us what this means. Nay, let them bring their books with them, and example us with its meaning if they can. Let them tell us what 'depth' in which nature hides her failures, or yet unperfected hideous germinations,—what formation in which she buries the kinds she repents that she has made upon the earth, or what 'deep'—what ocean cave of 'monsters' we shall drag to find our kindred in these species. Let our wise men tell us whether there be, or whether there ever was, any such thing as this in nature before. If 'such things are,' or have been in any other kind, let them produce the instances, and keep us in countenance and console us for our own.

Let them look at that murderer too, and interpret him for us. For he too is waiting to be interpreted, and he will wait till we understand his signs. He is speaking mute nature's language to us; we must get her key. Look at him as he stands there in the dark, subordinating that faculty which comprehends the whole, which recognises the divinity of his neighbour's right, to his fiendish end: preparing with the judgment of a man his little piece of machinery, with which he will take, as he would take a salmon, or a rat, his fellow-man. Look at him as he stands there now, listening patiently for your steps, waiting to strangle you as you go by him unarmed to-night, confiding in your fellow-man; waiting to drag you down from all the hopes and joys of life, for the sake of the loose coin, gold or silver, which he thinks he may find about you,—perhaps. 'How to KILL vermin and how to PREVENT the fiend,' was Tom's study. How to dispatch in the most agreeable and successful manner, creatures whose notions of good are constitutionally and diametrically opposed to the good of the larger whole, who have no sensibility to that, and no faculty whereby they perceive it to be the worthier; that is no doubt one part of the problem. The scientific question is, whether this creature be really what it seems, a new and more horrid kind of beast—a demoralization and deterioration of the human species into that. If it be, let our naturalists come to our aid here also, and teach us how to hunt him down and despatch him, with as much respect to the natural decencies which the fact of the external human form would seem still to exact from us, as the circumstances will admit of. Is it the beast, or is it 'the fiend?'—that is the question. The fiend which tells us that the angelic or divine nature is there—there still—overborne, trampled on, 'as it were, annihilated,' but lighting that gleam of 'wickedness,'—making of it, not instinct, but crime. Ah! we need not ask which it is. This one has told his own story, if we could but read it. He has left—he is leaving all the time, contributions, richest contributions to our natural history of man,—that history which must make the basis of our arts of cure. He was a wolf when you took him; but in his cell you found something else in him—did you not?—something that troubled and appalled you, with its kindred and likeness, and its exaction on your sympathy. When you hung him as you would not hang a dog;—when you put him to a death which you would think it indecent and inhuman to award to a creature of another species, you did not find him that. The law of the nobler nature lay in him as it were annihilated; he thought there was no such thing; but when nature's great voice was heard without also, and those 'bloody instructions he had taught returned to him'; when that voice of the people, which was the voice of God to him, echoed with its doom the voice within, and 'sweet religion,' with its divine appeals—'a rhapsody of words' no longer, came, to second that great argument,—the blind instincts were overpowered in him, the lesser usurping nature was dethroned,—the angelic nature arose, and had her hour, and shed parting gleams of glory on those fleeting days and nights; and he came forth, to die at last, not dragged like a beast—with a manly step—with heroic grandeur, vindicating the heroic type in nature, of that form he wore,—vindicating the violated law, accepting his doom, bowing to its ignominy, a man, a member of society,—a reconciled and accepted member of the commonweal.

How to prevent the fiend? is the question. Ah! what unlettered forces are these, unlearned still, with all our learning, that the dark, unaided wrestling hour 'in the little state of man,' leaves at the head of affairs there, seated in its chair of state, crowned, 'predominant,' to speak the word of doom for us all. 'He poisons him in the garden for his estate.' 'Lights, lights, lights!' is the word here. There is a cause in nature for these hard hearts, but it is not in the constitution of man. There is a cause; it is nature herself, crying out upon our learning, asking to be—interpreted.

Woe for the age whose universal learning is in forms that move and command no longer; that move and bind no longer with fear, or hope, or love, 'the common people.' Woe for the people who think that the everlasting truths of being—the eternal laws of science—are things for saints, and schoolmasters, and preachers only,—the people who carry about with them in secret, for week-day purposes, Edmund's creed, to whom nature is already 'their goddess, and their law,' ere they know her or her law—ere the appointed teacher has instructed them in it,—ere they know what divinity she, too, holds to,—ere the interpreter has translated into her speech, and evolved from her books, the old truths which shall not—though their old 'garments' should 'be changed'—which shall not pass away. Woe for the nations in whom that greater part that carries it, are godless, or whose vows are paid in secret to Edmund's goddess,—whose true faith is in appetite,—who have no secret laws imposed on that. 'Woe to the people who are in such a case,' no matter on which side of the ocean they may dwell, in the old world, or a new one; no matter under what political constitutions. No matter under what favourable external conditions, the national development that has that hollow in it, may proceed; no matter under what glorious and before unimagined conditions of a healthful, noble human development that development may proceed. Alas! for such a people. The rulers may cry 'Peace!' but there is none. And, alas! for the world in which such a power is growing up under new conditions, and waxing strong, and preparing for its leaps.

As a principle of social or political organisation, there is no religion,—there never has been any,—so fatal as none. That is a truth of which all history is an illustration. It is one which has been illustrated in the history of modern states, not less vividly than in the history of antiquity. And it will continue to be illustrated, on the same grand scale, in those terrific evils which the dissolution, or the dissoluteness of the larger whole creates, whenever the appointed teachers of a nation, the inductors of it into its highest learning, lag behind the common mind in their interpretations, and leave it to the people to construct their own rude 'tables of rejections'; whenever the practical axioms, which are the inevitable vintage of these undiscriminating and fatally false rejections, are suffered to become history.

'Woe to the land when its king is a child'; but thrice woe to it, when its teacher is a child. Alas! for the world, when the pabulum of her youthful visions and anticipations of learning have become meat for men, the prescribed provision for that nature in which man must live, or 'cease to be,' amid the sober realities of western science.

'Thou shouldst not have been OLD before thy time.'

'The glow-worm shows the matin to be near,
And 'gins to pale his ineffectual fire.'

CHAPTER XI.

THE CURE—NEW CONSTRUCTIONS—THE INITIATIVE.

Pyramus.—'Write me a prologue, and let the prologue seem to say, we will do no harm with our swords [spears]… and for the more better assurance, tell them that I, Pyramus, am not Pyramus, but Bottom the weaver. This will put them out of fear.'—Shake-spear.

'Truth and reason are common to every one, and are no more his who spoke them first, than his who spoke them after. Who follows another follows nothing, finds nothing, seeks nothing.'

'Authors have hitherto communicated themselves to the people by some particular and foreign mark. I, the first of any, by my universal being. Every man carries with him the entire form of human condition.'

'And besides, though I had a particular distinction by myself, what can it distinguish when I am no more? Can it point out and favor inanity?'

'But will thy manes such a gift bestow
As to make violets from thy ashes grow?'
Michael de Montaigne.

Hamlet.—'To thine own self be true,
And it doth follow as the night the day
Thou canst not then be false to any man.'
'To know a man well, were to know him-self.'

The complaint of the practical men against the philosophers who make such an outcry upon the uses and customs of the world as they find it, that they do not undertake to give us anything better in the place of them; or if they do, with their terrible experiments they leave us worse than they find us, does not apply in this case. Because this is science, and not philosophy in the sense which that word still conveys, when applied to subjects of this nature. We all know that the scientific man is a safe and brilliant practitioner. The most unspeculative men of practice have learned to prefer him and his arts to the best empiricism. It is the philosophers we have had in this field, with their rash anticipations,—with their unscientific pre-conceptions,—with a pre-conception, instead of a fore-knowledge of the power they deal with, commanding results which do not,—there is the point,—which do not follow.

Let no one say that this reformer is one of those who expose our miserable condition, without offering to improve it; or that he is one of those who take away our gold and jewels with their tests, and leave us no equivalent. This is no destroyer. He will help us to save all that we have. He is guarding us from the error of those who would let it alone till the masses have taken the work in hand for themselves, without science. 'That is the way to lay all flat.'

He is not one of those, 'who to make clean, efface, and who cure diseases by death.' To found so great a thing as the state anew; to dissolve that so old and solid structure, and undertake to recompose it as a whole on the spot, is a piece of work which this chemist, after a survey of his apparatus, declines to take in; though he fairly admits, that if the question were of 'a new world,' and not 'a world already formed to certain customs,' science might have, perhaps, some important suggestions to make as to the original structure. And yet for all that, it is a scientific practice that is propounded here. It is a scientific innovation and renovation, that is propounded; the greatest that was ever propounded,—total, absolute, but not sudden. It is a remedy for the world as it is, that this reformer is propounding.

New constructions according to true definitions, scientific institutions,—institutions of culture and regimen and cure, based on the recognition of the actual human constitution and laws,—based on an observation as diligent and subtle, and precepts as severe as those which we apply to the culture of any other form in nature,—that is the proposition. 'It were a strange speech which, spoken or spoken oft, should reclaim a man from a vice to which he is by nature subject.' 'Folly is not to be cured by bare admonition.' This plan of culture and cure involves not the knowledge of that nature which is in all men only, but a science, enriched with most careful collections of all the specific varieties of that nature. The fullest natural history of those forces that are operant in the hourly life of man, the most profound and subtle observation of the facts of this history, the most thoroughly scientific collection of them, make the beginning of this enterprise. The propounder of this cure will have to begin with the secret disposition of every man laid open, and the possibilities of human character exhausted, by means of a dissection of the entire form of that human nature, which every man carries with him, and a solar-microscopic exhibition of the several dispositions and tempers of men, in grand ideal portraits, conspicuous instances of them, where the particular disposition and temper is 'predominant,' as in the characterisation of Hamlet, where it takes all the persons of the drama to exhibit characteristics which are more or less developed in all men. Those natural peculiarities of disposition that work so incessantly and potently in this human business, those 'points of nature,' those predetermining forces of the human life, must come under observation here, and the whole nature of the passions also, and a science of 'the will,' very different from that philosophy of it which our metaphysicians have entertained us with so long. He will have all the light of science, all the power of the new method brought to bear on this study. And he will have a similar collection, not less scientific, of the history of the human fortunes and their necessary effects on character; for these are the points that we must deal with 'by way of application, and to these all our labour is limited and tied; for we cannot fit a garment except we take a measure of the form we would fit it to.' Nothing short of this can serve as the basis of a scientific system of human education.

But this is not all. It is the human nobility and greatness that is the end, and that 'craves,' as the noble who is found wanting in it tells us, 'a noble cunning.' It is no single instrumentality that makes the apparatus of this culture and cure. Skilful combinations of appliances based on the history of those forces which are within our power, which 'we can deal with by way of alteration,' forces 'from which the mind suffereth,' which have operation on it, so potent that 'they can almost change the stamp of nature,'—that they can make indeed, 'another nature,'—these are the engines,—this is the machinery which the scientific state will employ for its ends. These are the engines, this is the machinery that is going to take the place of that apparatus which the state, as it is, finds such need of. This is the machinery to 'prevent the fiend,' which the scientific statesman is propounding.

'I would we were all of ONE MIND, and one mind good' says our Poet. 'O there were desolation of gallowses and gaolers. I speak against my present profit,' [he adds,—he was speaking not as a judge or a lawyer, but as a gaoler,] 'I speak against my present profit, but my wish hath a preferment in it.'

(A preferment?)—That is the solution propounded by science, of the problem that is pressing on us, and urging on us with such violent appeals, its solution. 'I would we were all of one mind, and one mind good. My wish hath a preferment in it.'

'Folly is not to be cured by bare admonition.' 'It were a strange speech which, spoken, or spoken oft, should cure a man of a vice to which he is by nature subject,'—subject—by nature.—That is the Philosopher. 'What he cannot help in his nature you account a vice in him,' says the poor citizen, putting in a word on the Poet's behalf for Coriolanus whose education, whatever Volumnia may think about it, was not scientific, or calculated to reduce that 'partliness,' that disorganizing social principle, whose subsequent demonstrations gave her so much offence. Not admonition, not preaching and scolding, and not books only, but institutions, laws, customs, habit, education in its more limited sense, 'association, emulation, praise, blame,' all the agencies 'from which the mind suffereth,'— which have power to change it, in skilfully compounded recipes and regimen scientifically adapted to cases, and not prescribed only, but enforced,—these make the state machinery—these are the engines that are going to 'prevent the fiend,' and educate the 'one mind,'— the one mind good, which is the sovereign of the common-WEAL,—'my wish hath a preferment in it,'—the one only man who will make when he is crowned, not Rome, but room enough for us all,—who will make when he is crowned such desolation of gallowses and gaolers. These are the remedies for the diseases of the state, when the scientific practitioner is called in at last, and permitted to undertake his cure. But he will not wait for that. He will not wait to be asked. He has no delicacy about pushing himself forward in this business. The concentration of genius and science on it, henceforth,—the gradual adaptation of all these grand remedial agencies to this common end,— this end which all truly enlightened minds will conspire for,—find to be their own,—this is the plan;—this is the sober day-dream of the Elizabethan Reformer; this is the plot of the Elizabethan Revolutionist. This is the radicalism that he is setting on foot. This is the cure of the state which he is undertaking.

We want to command effects, and the way to do that is to find causes; and we must find them according to the new method, and not by reasoning it thus and thus, for the result is just the same, this philosopher observes, as if we had not reasoned it thus and thus, but some other way. That is the difficulty with that method, which is in use here at present, which this philosopher calls 'common logic.' Life goes on, life as it is and was, in the face of our reasonings; but it goes on in the dark; the phenomena are on the surface in the form of EFFECTS, and all our weal and woe is in them; but the CAUSES are beneath unexplored. They are able to give us certain impressions of their natures; they strike us, and blast us, it may be, by way of teaching us something of their powers; but we do not know them; they are within our own souls and lives, and we do not know them; not because they lie without the range of a scientific enquiry, but because we will not apply to them the scientific method; because the old method of 'preconception' here is still considered the true one.

The plan of this great scientific enterprise was one which embraced, from the first, the whole body of the common-weal. It concerned itself immediately and directly with all the parts and members of the social state, from the king on his throne to the beggar in his straw. Its aim was to disclose ultimately, and educate in every member of society that entire and noble form of human nature which 'each man carries with him,' and whereby the individual man is naturally and constitutionally a member of the common-weal. Its proposition was to develop ultimately and educate—successfully educate—in each integer of the state, the integral principle—the principle whereby in man the true conservation and integrity of the part—the virtue, and felicity, and perfection, of the part, tend to the weal of the whole—tend to perfect and advance the whole.

'To thine own self be true,
And it doth follow as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any MAN.'
'Know thy-SELF. Know thy-self.'

This enterprise was not the product of a single individual mind, and it is important that this fact should be fully and unmistakeably enunciated here; because the illustrious statesman, and man of letters, who assumed, in his own name and person, that part of it which could then be openly exhibited, the one on whom the great task of perfecting and openly propounding the new method of learning was devolved, is the one whose relation to this enterprise has been principally insisted on in this volume.

The history of this great philanthropic association—an association of genius, a combination of chief minds, from which the leadership and direction of the modern ages proceeds, the history of this 'society,' as it was called, when the term was still fresh in that special application; at least, when it was not yet qualified by its application to those very different kinds of voluntary individual combinations—'bodies of neighbourhood' within the larger whole, to which that movement has given rise; the history of this society,—this first 'Shake-spear Society'—much as it is to our purpose, and much as it is to the particular purpose of this volume, can only be incidentally treated here. But as this work was originally prepared for publication in the HISTORICAL KEY to the Elizabethan Tradition which formed the FIRST BOOK of it, it was the part of that great Political and Military Chief, and not less illustrious Man of Letters, who was recognised, in his own time, as the beginner of this movement and the founder of English philosophy, which was chiefly developed.

And it is the history of that 'great unknown'—that great Elizabethan unknown, for whose designs there was needed then a veil of a closer texture—of a more cunning pattern than any which the exigencies of modern authorship tend to fabricate, which must make the key to this tradition;—it is the history of that great unknown, whose incognito was a closed vizor,—that it was death to open,—a vizor that did open once, and—the sequel is in our history, and will leave 'a brand' upon the page which that age makes in it,—'the age that did it, and suffered it, to the end of the world.' So says the Poet of that age, ('Age, thou are shamed.' 'And peep about to find ourselves dishonourable graves'). It is the history of the Tacitus who could not wait for a better Caesar. It is the history of the man who was sent to the block, they tell us, who are able to give us those little secret historic motives that do not get woven always into the larger story; it is the history of the man who (if his family understood it) was sent to the block for the repetition, in his own name, of the words—the very words which he had written with his 'goose-pen,' as he calls it, years before—which he had written under cover of the 'spear' that was 'shaken' in sport, or that shook with fear,—under cover of 'the well turned and true filled lines in each of which he seems to shake a lance as brandished in the eyes of Ignorance,' without suspicion—without challenge, from the crowned Ignorance, or the Monster that crowned it. It is the history of this unknown, obscure, unhonoured Father of the Modern Age that unlocks this tradition.

It is the secret friend and 'brother' of the author of the Novum Organum, whose history unlocks this tradition. And when shall the friendship of such 'a twain' gladden our earth again, and build its 'eternal summer' in our common things? When shall a 'marriage of true minds' so even be celebrated on the lips and in the lives of men again? It is the friend and literary partner of our great recognised philosopher—his partner in his 'private and retired arts,' and in his cultivation of 'the principal and supreme sciences,' in whose history the key to this locked up learning is hidden.

It was an enterprise which originated in the Court of Queen Elizabeth, in that little company of wits, and poets, and philosophers, which was the first-fruit of the new development of the national genius, that followed the revival of the learning of antiquity in this island—the fruit which that old stock began manifestly to bud and blossom with, about the beginning of the latter half of that Queen's reign. For it was the old northern genius, under the influence, not of the revival of the learning of antiquity only, but of that accumulated influence which its previous revival on the Continent brought with it here; under the influence, too, of that insular nurture, which began so soon to colour and insulate English history;—'Britain is a world by itself,' says Prince Cloten, 'and we will nothing pay,' etc.—it was the old northern genius nurtured in the cradle of that 'bravery' which had written its page of fire in the Roman Caesar's story—which had arrested the old classic historian's pen, and fired it with a poet's prophecy, and taught him too how to pronounce from the old British hero's lip the burning speech of English freedom;—it was that which began to show itself here, then, in that new tongue, which we call the 'Elizabethan.' It was that which could not fit its words to its mouth as it had a mind to do under those conditions, and was glad to know that 'the audience was deferred.' That was the thing which found itself so much embarrassed by the presence of 'a man of prodigious fortune at the table,' who had leave 'to change its arguments with a magisterial authority.' It was that which was expected to produce its speech to 'serve as the base matter to illuminate'—not the Caesar—but the Tudor—the Tudor and the Stuart: the last of the Tudors and the first of the Stuarts. 'AGE, thou art shamed.' It was the true indigenous product of the English nationality under that great stimulus, which made that age; and the practical determination of the English mind, and the spirit of the ancient English liberties, the recognition of the common dignity of that form of human nature which each man carries entire with him—the sentiment of a common human family and brotherhood, which this race had brought with it from the forests of the North, and which it had conserved through ages of oppression, went at once into the new speculation, and determined its practical bent, and shaped this enterprise.

It was an enterprise which included in its plan of operations an immediate influence upon the popular mind—the most direct, immediate, and radically reforming influences which could be brought to bear, under those conditions, upon the habits and sentiments of the ignorant, custom-bound masses of men;—those masses which are, in all their ignorance and unfitness for rule, as the philosopher of this age perceived, 'that greater part which carries it'—those wretched statesmen, under whose rule we are all groaning. 'Questions about clothes, and cookery, and law chicanery,' are the questions with which the new movement begins to attract attention—a universally favourable attention—towards its beneficent purposes, and to that new command of 'effects' which arms them. But this is only 'to show an abused people that they are not wholly forgotten.' To improve the external condition of men, to 'accommodate' man to those exterior natural forces, of which he had been, till then, the 'slave,'—to minister to the need and add to the comforts of the king in his palace, and 'Tom' in his hovel,—this was the first scientific move. This was a movement which required no concealment. Its far-reaching consequences, its elevating power on the masses, its educational power, its revolutionary power, did not lie within the range of any observation which the impersonated state was able to bring to bear at that time upon the New Organum and its reaches.

But this was not the only scientifically educational agency which this great Educational Association was able to include, even then, in its scheme for the culture and instruction of the masses—for the culture and instruction of that common social unit, which makes the masses and determines political predominance. Quite the most powerful instrumentality which it is possible to conceive of, for purposes of direct effect in the way of intellectual and moral stimulus, in that stage of a popular development, was then already in process of preparation here; the 'plant' of a wondrous and inestimable machinery of popular influence stood offering itself, at that very moment, to the politicians with whom this movement originated, urging itself on their notice, begging to be purchased, soliciting their monopoly, proposing itself to their designs.

A medium of direct communication between the philosophic mind, in its more chosen and noblest field of research, and the minds of those to whom the conventional signs of learning are not yet intelligible,—one in which the language of action and dumb show was, by the condition of the representation, predominant,—that language which is, as this philosophy observed, so much more powerful in its impression than words,—not on brutes only, but on those 'whose eyes are more learned than their ears,'—a medium of communication which was one tissue of that 'mute' language, whereby the direction, 'how to sustain a tyranny newly usurped,' was conveyed once, stood prepared to their hands, waiting the dictation of the message of these new Chiefs and Teachers, who had taken their cue from Machiavel in exhibiting the arts of government, and who thought it well enough that the people should know how to preserve tyrannies newly usurped.

Those 'amusements,' with which governments that are founded and sustained, 'by cutting off and keeping low the grandees and nobility' of a nation, naturally seek to propitiate and divert the popular mind,—those amusements which the peoples who sustain tyrannies are apt to be fond of—'he loves no plays as thou dost, Antony,'—that 'pulpit,' from which the orator of Caesar stole and swayed the hearts of the people with his sugared words; and his dumb show of the stabs in Caesar's mantle became, in the hands of these new conspirators, an engine which those old experimenters lacked,—an engine which the lean and wrinkled Cassius, with his much reading and 'observation strange' and dangerous, looking through of the thoughts of men; and the grave, high-toned Brutus, with his logic and his stilted oratory, could not, on second thoughts, afford to lack. It was this which supplied the means of that 'volubility of application' which those 'Sir Oracles,' those 'grave sirs of note,' 'in observing their well-graced forms of speech,' it is intimated, 'might easily want.'

By means of that 'first use of the parable,' whereby (while for the present we drop 'the argument') it serves to illustrate, and bring first under the notice of the senses, the abstruser truths of a new learning,—truths which are as yet too far out of the road of common opinion to be conveyed in other forms,—these amusements became, in the hands of the new Teachers and Wise Men, with whom the Wisdom of the Moderns had its beginning, the means of an insidious, but most 'grave and exceedingly useful,' popular instruction.

But the immediate influence on the common mind was not the influence to which this association trusted for the fulfilment of its great plan of social renovation and advancement. That so aspiring social position, and that not less commanding position in the world of letters, built up with so much labour, with such persistent purpose, with a pertinacity which accepted of no defeat,—built up expressly to this end,—that position from which a new method of learning could be openly propounded, in the face of the schools, in the face of the Universities, in the face and eyes of all the Doctors of Learning then, was, in itself, no unimportant part of the machinery which this political association was compelled to include in the plot of its far-reaching enterprise.

That trumpet-call which rang through Europe, which summoned the scholasticism and genius of the modern ages, from the endless battles of the human dogmas and conceits, into the field of true knowledge,—that summons which recalled, and disciplined, and gave the word of command to the genius of the modern ages, that was already tumultuously rushing thither,—that call which was able to command the modern learning, and impose on it, for immediate use, the New Machine of Learning,—that Machine which, even in its employment in the humblest departments of observation, has already formed, ere we know it, the new mind, which has disciplined and trained the modern intelligence, and created insidiously new habits of judgment and belief,—created, too, a new stock of truths, which are accepted as a part of the world's creed, and from which the whole must needs be evolved in time,—this, in itself, was no small step towards securing the great ends of this enterprise. It was a step which we are hardly in a position, as yet, to estimate. We cannot see what it was till the nobler applications of this Method begin to be made. It has cost us something while we have waited for these. The letter to Sir Henry Savile, on 'the Helps to the Intellectual Powers,' which is referred to with so much more iteration and emphasis than anything which the surface of the letter exhibits would seem to bear, in its brief hints, points also this way, though the effect of mental exercises, by means of other instrumentalities, on the habits of a larger class, is also comprehended in it. But the formation of new intellectual habits in men liberally educated, appeared to promise, ultimately, those larger fruits in the advancement and culture of learning which, in 'the hour-glass' of that first movement, could be, as yet, only prophecy and anticipation. The perfection of the Human Science, then first propounded, the filling up of 'the Anticipations' of Learning, which the Philosophy of Science also included in its system,—not rash and premature, however, and not claiming the place of knowledge, but kept apart in a place by themselves,—put down as anticipations, not interpretations,—the filling up of this outline was what was expected as the ultimate result of this proceeding, in the department of speculative philosophy.

But in that great practical enterprise of a social and political renovation—that enterprise of 'constructions' according to true definitions, which this science fastens its eye on, and never ceases to contemplate—it was not the immediate effect on the popular mind, neither was it the gradual effect on the speculative habits of men of learning and men of intelligence in general, that was chiefly relied on. It was the secret tradition, the living tradition of that intention; it was the tradition whereby that association undertook to continue itself across whatever gulfs and chasms in social history 'the fortunes of our state' might make. It was that second use of the fable, which is 'to wrap up and conceal'; it was that 'enigmatic' method, which reserves the secrets of learning for those 'who by the aid of an instructor, or by their own research, are able to pierce the veil,' which was relied on for this result. It was the power of that tradition, its generative power, its power to reproduce 'in a better hour' the mind and will of that 'company'—it was its power to develop and frame that identity which was the secret of this association, and its new principle of UNION—that identity of the 'one mind, and one mind good,' which is the human principle of union—that identity which made a common name, a common personality, for those who worked together for that end, and whose WILL in it was 'one.' A name, a personality, a philosophic unity, in whose great radiance we have basked so long—a name, a personality whose secret lies heavy on all our learning—whose secret of power, whose secret of inclusiveness and inexhaustible wealth of knowledge, has paralysed all our criticism, 'made marble'—as Milton himself confesses—'made marble with too much conceiving.' 'Write me a prologue, and let the prologue seem to say [in dumb action], we will do no harm with our swords.' 'They all flourish their swords.' 'There is but one mind in all these men, and that is bent against Caesar'—Julius Caesar.

'Even so the race
Of SHAKE-SPEAR's mind and manners brightly shines,
In his well turned and true filed—lines;
In each of which he seems to SHAKE a LANCE,
As brandished at the eyes of—Ignorance,'

[We will do no harm, with our—WORDS [it seems to say.]—Prologue.]

It was the power of the Elizabethan Art of Tradition that was relied on here, that 'living Art'; it was its power to reproduce this Institution, through whatever fatal eventualities the movement which these men were seeking then to anticipate, and organize, and control, might involve; and though the Parent Union should be overborne in those disastrous, not unforeseen, results—overborne and forgotten—and though other means employed for securing that end should fail.

It is to that posthumous effect that all the hope points here. It is the Leonatus Posthumus who must fulfil this oracle.

'Now with the drops of this most balmy time
My love looks fresh, and death to me subscribes;
Since, spite of him, I'LL live in this poor rhyme,
While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes;
And thou in this shall find thy monument,
When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent.'

'Not marble, nor the gilded monuments [Elizabethan AGE.]
Of Princes shall outlive this power-ful rhyme.'

[This is our unconscious Poet, who does not know that his poems are worth printing, or that they are going to get printed—who does not know or care whether they are or not.]

'But you shall shine more bright in these contents,
Than unswept stone besmear'd with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn [iconoclasm],
And broils [civil war] root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword, nor war's quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.'

[What is it, then, that this prophet is relying on? Is it a manuscript? Is it the recent invention of goose-quills which he is celebrating here with so much lyrical pomp, in so many, many lyrics? Here, for instance:—]

'His beauty shall in these black lines be seen,
And they shall live, and he in them still green.'

And here—

'O where, alack!
Shall time's best jewel from time's chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
O none, unless this miracle [this miracle] have might,
that in black ink—'

Is this printer's ink? Or is it the ink of the prompter's book? or the fading ink of those loose papers, so soon to be 'yellowed with age,' scattered about no one knew where, that some busy-body, who had nothing else to do, might perhaps take it into his head to save?

'O none, unless this miracle'—THIS MIRACLE, the rejoicing scholar and man of letters, who was not for an age, but for all time, cries—defying tyranny, laughing at princes' edicts, reaching into his own great assured futurity across the gulfs of civil war, planting his feet upon that sure ground, and singing songs of triumph over the spent tombs of brass and tyrants' crests; like that orator who was to make an oration in public, and found himself a little straitened in time to fit his words to his mouth as he had a mind to do, when Eros, one of his slaves, brought him word that the audience was deferred till the next day; at which he was so ravished with joy, that he enfranchised him. 'This miracle.' He knows what miracles are, for he has told us; but none other knew what miracle this was that he is celebrating here with all this wealth of symphonies.

'O none, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.'

['My love,'—wait till you know what it is, and do not think to know with the first or second reading of poems, that are on the surface of them scholastic, academic, mystical, obtrusively enigmatical. Perhaps, after all, it is that Eros who was enfranchised, emancipated.]

'But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest [thou owes!],
Nor shall death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to—thee!

But here is our prophecy, which we have undertaken to read with the aid of this collation:—

'When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry;
Nor 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 [collateral sounds] of all posterity,
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the JUDGMENT that YOURSELF arise [till then],
You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.'

See the passages at the commencement of this chapter, if there be any doubt as to this reading.

'In lover's eyes.'

Leonatus Posthumus. Shall's have a Play of this? Thou scornful Page, There lie thy part. [To Imogen disguised as Fidele.]

The consideration which qualified, in the mind of the Author of the Advancement of Learning, the great difficulty which the question of civil government presented at that time, is the key to this 'plot.' For men, and not 'Romans' only, 'are like sheep;' and if you can but get some few to go right, the rest will follow. That was the plan. To create a better leadership of men,—to form a new order and union of men,—a new nobility of men, acquainted with the doctrine of their own nature, and in league for its advancement, to seize the 'thoughts' of those whose law is the law of the larger activity, and 'inform them with nobleness,'—was the plan.

For these the inner school was opened; for these its ascending platforms were erected. For these that 'closet' and 'cabinet,' where the 'simples' of the Shake-spear philosophy are all locked and labelled, was built. For these that secret 'cabinet of the Muses,' where the Delphic motto is cut anew, throws out its secret lures,—its gay, many-coloured, deceiving lures,—its secret labyrinthine clues,—for all lines in this building meet in that centre. All clues here unwind to that. For these—for the minds on whom the continuation of this enterprise was by will devolved, the key to that cabinet—the historical key to its inmost compartment of philosophic mysteries, was carefully laboured and left,—pointed to—pointed to with immortal gesticulations, and left ('What I cannot speak, I point out with my finger'); the key to that 'Verulamian cabinet,' which we shall hear of when the fictitious correspondence in which the more secret history of this time was written, comes to be opened. That cabinet where the subtle argument that was inserted in the Poem or the Play, but buried there in its gorgeous drapery, is laid bare in prose as subtle ('I here scatter it up and down indifferently for verse'); where the new truth that was spoken in jest, as well as in parables, to those who were without, is unfolded,—that truth which moved unseen amid the gambols of the masque,—preferring to raise questions rather than objections,—which stalked in, without suspicion, in 'the hobby-horse' of the clown,—which the laugh of the groundlings was so often in requisition to cover,—that 'to beguile the time looked like the time,'—that 'looked like the flower, and was the serpent under it.'

For these that secret place of confidential communication was provided, where 'the argument' of all these Plays is opened without respect to the 'offence in it,'—to its utmost reach of abstruseness and subtlety—in its utmost reach of departure from 'the road of common opinion,'—where the Elizabethan secrets of Morality, and Policy and Religion, which made the Parables of the New Doctrine, are unrolled, at last, in all the new, artistic glories of that 'wrapped up' intention. This is the second use of the Fable in which we resume that dropped argument,—dropped for that time, while Caesar still commanded his thirty legions; and when the question, 'How long to philosophise?' being started in the schools again, the answer returned still was, 'Until our armies cease to be commanded by fools.' This is that second use of the Fable where we find the moral of it at last,—that moral which our moralists have missed in it,—that moral which is not 'vulgar and common-place,' but abstruse, and out of the road of common opinion,—that moral in which the Moral Science, which is the Wisdom of the Moderns, lurks.

It is to these that the Wise Man of our ages speaks (for we have him,—we do not wait for him), in the act of displaying a little, and folding up for the future, his plan of a Scientific Human Culture; it is to these that he speaks when he says, with a little of that obscurity which 'he mortally hates, and would avoid if he could': 'As Philocrates sported with Demosthenes,' you may not marvel, Athenians, that Demosthenes and I do differ, for he drinketh water, and I drink wine; and like as we read of an ancient parable of the two gates of sleep '… so if we put on sobriety and attention, we shall find it a sure maxim in knowledge, that the pleasant liquor of wine is the more vaporous, and the braver gate of ivory sendeth forth the falser dreams.' ['I,' says 'Michael,' who is also in favour of 'sobriety,' and critical upon excesses of all kinds, 'I have ever observed, that super-celestial theories and sub-terranean manners are in singular accordance.']

And in his general proposal to lay open 'those parts of learning which lie fresh and waste, and not improved and converted by the industry of man, to the end that such a plot, made and committed to memory, may both minister light to any public designation, and also serve to excite voluntary endeavours,' he says, 'I do foresee that of those things which I shall enter and register as deficiencies and omissions, many will conceive and censure that some of them are already done, and extant, others to be but curiosities and things of no great use' [such as the question of style, for instance, and those 'particular' arts of tradition to which this remark is afterwards applied]—and others to be of too great difficulty—and almost impossibility—to be compassed and effected; but for the two first, I refer myself to particulars; for the last,—touching impossibility,—I take it those things are to be held possible, which may be done by some person, though not by every one; and which may be done by many, though not by any one; and which may be done in succession of ages, though not within the hour-glass of one man's life; and which may be done by public designation, though not by private endeavour.

That was 'the plot'—that was the plan of the Elizabethan Innovation.

THE ENIGMA OF LEONATUS POSTHUMUS.

'When as a lion's whelp shall, to himself unknown, without seeking find, and be embraced by a piece of tender air; and when from a stately cedar shall be lopped branches, which, being dead many years, shall after revive, be jointed to the old stock, and freshly grow; then shall Posthumus end his miseries, Britain be fortunate, and flourish in peace and plenty.'

THE VERULAMIAN CABINET, AND ITS WORKMANSHIP.

Here, for instance, is a specimen of the manner in which scholars who write about these times, allude to the reserved parts of this philosophy, and to those 'richer and bolder meanings,' which could not then be inserted in the acknowledged writings of so great a person. This is a specimen of the manner in which a posthumous collection and reintegration of this philosophy, and a posthumous emancipation of it, is referred to, by scholars who write from the Continent somewhere about these days. Whether the date of the writing be a little earlier or a little later,—some fifty years or so,—it does not seem to make much difference as to the general intent and purport of it.

Here is a scholar, for instance, whose main idea of life on this planet it appears to be, to collect the philosophy, and protect the posthumous fame of the Lord Bacon. For this purpose, he has established a literary intimacy, quite the most remarkable one on record—at least, between scholars of different and remote nationalities—between himself and two English gentlemen, a Mr. Smith, and the Rev. Dr. Rawley. He writes from the Hague but he appears to have acquired in some way a most extraordinary insight into this business.

'Though I thought that I had already sufficiently showed what veneration I had for the illustrious Lord Verulam, yet I shall take such care for the future, that it may not possibly be denied, that I endeavoured most zealously to make this thing known to the learned world. But neither shall this design of setting forth in one volume all the Lord Bacon's works, proceed without consulting you'—[This letter is addressed to the Rev. Dr. Rawley, and is dated a number of years after Lord Bacon's death]—'without consulting you, and without inviting you to cast in your symbol, worthy such an excellent edition: that so the appetite of the reader'—[It was a time when symbols of various kinds—large and small—were much in use in the learned world]—'that so the appetite of the reader, provoked already by his published works, may be further gratified by the pure novelty of so considerable an appendage.

'For the French interpreter, who patched together his things I know not whence, and tacked that motley piece to him; they shall not have place in this great collection. But yet I hope to obtain your leave to publish a-part, as an appendix to the Natural History,—that exotic work,—gathered together from this and the other place (of his lordship's writings), [that is the true account of it] and by me translated into—Latin.

'For seeing the genuine pieces of the Lord Bacon are already extant, and in many hands, it is necessary that the foreign reader be given to understand of what threads the texture of that book consists, and how much of truth there is in that which that shameless person does, in his preface to the reader, so stupidly write of you.

'My brother, of blessed memory, turned his words into Latin, in the First Edition of the Natural History, having some suspicion of the fidelity of an unknown author. I will, in the Second Edition, repeat them, and with just severity animadvert upon them: that they, into whose hands that work comes, may know it to be rather patched up of many distinct pieces; how much soever the author bears himself upon the specious title of Verulam. Unless, perhaps, I should particularly suggest in your name, that these words were there inserted, by way of caution; and lest malignity and rashness should any way blemish the fame of so eminent a person.

'If my fate would permit me to live according to my wishes, I would fly over into England, that I might behold whatsoever remaineth in your Cabinet of the Verulamian workmanship, and at least make my eyes witnesses of it, if the possession of the merchandise be yet denied to the public. At present I will support the wishes of my impatient desire, with hope of seeing, one day, those (issues) which being committed to faithful privacy, wait the time till they may safely see the light, and not be stifled in their birth.

'I wish, in the mean time, I could have a sight of the copy of the Epistle to Sir Henry Savil, concerning the Helps of the Intellectual Powers: for I am persuaded, as to the other Latin remains, that I shall not obtain,for present use, the removal of them from the place in which they now are.'

Extract of a letter from Mr. Isaac Gruter. Here is the beginning of it:—

'TO THE REV. WM. RAWLEY, D.D.

'Isaac Gruter wisheth much health.

'Reverend Sir,—It is not just to complain of the slowness of your answer, seeing that the difficulty of the passage, in the season in which you wrote, which was towards winter, might easily cause it to come no faster; seeing likewise there is so much to be found in it which may gratify desire, and perhaps so much the more, the longer it was ere it came to my hands. And although I had little to send back, besides my thanks for the little Index, yet that seemed to me of such moment that I would no longer suppress them: especially because I accounted it a crime to have suffered Mr. Smith to have been without an answer: Mr. Smith, my most kind friend, and to whose care, in my matters, I owe all regard and affection, yet without diminution of that (part and that no small one neither) in which Dr. Rawley hath place. So that the souls of us three, so throughly agreeing, may be aptly said to have united in a triga.'

It is not necessary, of course, to deny the historical claims of the Rev. Dr. Rawley, who is sufficiently authenticated; or even of Mr. Smith himself, who would no doubt be able to substantiate himself, in case a particular inquiry were made for him; and it would involve a serious departure from the method of invention usually employed in this association, which did not deal with shadows when contemporary instrumentalities were in requisition, if the solidarity of Mr. Isaac Gruter himself should admit of a moment's question. The precautions of this secret, but so powerful league,—the skill with which its instrumentalities were selected and adapted to its ends, is characterised by that same matchless dramatic power, which betrays 'the source from which it springs' even when it 'only plays at working.'

But if any one is anxious to know who the third person of this triga really was, or is, a glance at the Directory would enable such a one to arrive at a truer conclusion than the first reading of this letter would naturally suggest. For this is none other than the person whom the principle of this triga, and its enlightened sentiment and bond of union, already symbolically comprehended, whom it was intended to comprehend ultimately in all the multiplicity and variety of his historical manifestations, though it involved a deliberate plan for reducing and suppressing his many-headedness, and restoring him to the use of his one only mind. For though the name of this person is often spelt in three letters, and oftener in one, it takes all the names in the Directory to spell it in full. For this is none other than the person that 'Michael' refers to so often and with so much emphasis, glancing always at his own private name, and the singular largeness and comprehensiveness of his particular and private constitution. 'All the world knows me in my book, and my book in me.' 'I, the first of any, by my universal being. Every man carries with him the entire form of human condition.'

But the name of Mr. Isaac Gruter was not less comprehensive, and could be made to represent the whole triga in an emergency, as well as another; ['I take so great pleasure in being judged and known that it is almost indifferent to me in which of the two forms I am so'] though that does not hinder him from inviting Dr. Eawley to cast in his symbol, which was 'so considerable an appendage.' For though the very smallest circle sometimes represents it, it was none other than the symbol that gave name to the theatre in which the illustrated works of this school were first exhibited; the theatre which hung out for its sign on the outer wall, 'Hercules and his load too.' At a time when 'conceits' and 'devices in letters,' when anagrams and monograms, and charades, and all kinds of 'racking of orthography' were so much in use, not as curiosities merely, but to avoid another kind of 'racking,' a cipher referred to in this philosophy as the 'wheel cipher,' which required the letters of the alphabet to be written in a circle to serve as a key to the reading, supplies a clue to some of these symbols. The first three letters of the alphabet representing the whole in the circle, formed a character or symbol which was often made to stand as a 'token' for a proper name, easily spelt in that way, when phonography and anagrams were in such lively and constant use,—while it made, at the same time, a symbolical representation of the radical doctrine of the new school in philosophy,—a school then so new, that its 'Doctors' were compelled to 'pray in the aid of simile,' even in affixing their names to their own works, in some cases. And that same letter which was capable of representing in this secret language either the microcosm, or 'the larger whole,' as the case required (either with, or without the eye or I in it, sending rays to the circumference) sufficed also to spell the name of the Grand Master of this lodge,—'who also was a man, take him for all in all,'—the man who took two hemispheres for 'his symbol.' That was the so considerable appendage which his friend alludes to,—though 'the natural gaiety of disposition,' of which we have so much experience in other places, and which the gravity of these pursuits happily does not cloud, suggests a glance in passing at another signification, which we find alluded to also in another place in Mrs. Quickly's 'Latin.' Mere frivolities as these conceits and private and retired arts seem now, the Author of the Advancement of Learning tells us, that to those who have spent their labours and studies in them, they seem great matters, referring particularly to that cipher in which it is possible to write omnia per omnia, and stopping to fasten the key of it to his 'index' of 'the principal and supreme sciences,'—those sciences 'which being committed to faithful privacy, wait the time when they may safely see the light, and not be stifled in their birth.'

New constructions, according to true definitions, was the plan,—this triga was the initiative.

CHAPTER XII.

THE IGNORANT ELECTION REVOKED.—A WRESTLING INSTANCE.

'For as they were men of the best composition in the state of Rome, which, either being consuls, inclined to the people' ['If he would but incline to the people, there never was a worthier man'], 'or being tribunes, inclined to the senate, so, in the matter which we handle now [doctrine of Cure], they be the best physicians which, being learned, incline to the traditions of experience; or, being empirics, incline to the methods of learning.' Advancement of Learning.

But while the Man of Science was yet planning these vast scientific changes—vast, but noiseless and beautiful as the movements of God in nature—there was another kind of revolution brewing. All that time there was a cloud on his political horizon—'a huge one, a black one'—slowly and steadfastly accumulating, and rolling up from it, which he had always an eye on. He knew there was that in it which no scientific apparatus that could be put in operation then, on so short a notice, and when science was so feebly aided, would be able to divert or conduct entirely. He knew that so fearful a war-cloud would have to burst, and get overblown, before any chance for those peace operations, those operations of a solid and lasting peace, which he was bent on, could be had—before any space on the earth could be found broad enough for his Novum Organum to get to work on, before the central levers of it could begin to stir.

That revolution which 'was singing in the wind' then to his ear, was one which would have to come first in the chronological order; but it was easy enough to see that it was not going to be such a one, in all respects, as a man of his turn of genius would care to be out in with his works.

He knew well enough what there was in it. He had not been so long in such sharp daily collision with the elements of it—he had not been so long trying conclusions with them under such delicate conditions, conditions requiring so nice an observation—without arriving at some degree of assurance in regard to their main properties, without attaining, indeed, to what he calls knowledge on that subject—knowledge as distinguished from opinion—so as to be able to predict 'with a near aim' the results of the possible combinations. The conclusion of this observation was, that the revolutionary movements then at hand were not, on the whole, likely to be conducted throughout on rigidly scientific principles.

The spectacle of a people violently 'revoking their ignorant election,' and empirically seeking to better their state under such leaders as such a movement was likely to throw up, and that, too, when the old military government was still so strong in moral forces, so sure of a faction in the state—of a faction of the best, which would cleave the state to the centre, which would resist with the zealot's fire unto blood and desperation the unholy innovation—that would stand on the last plank of the wrecked order, and wade through seas of slaughter to restore it; the prospect of untried political innovation, under such circumstances, did not present itself to this Poet's imagination in a form so absolutely alluring, as it might have done to a philosopher of a less rigidly inductive, turn of mind.

His canvas, with its magic draught of the coming event, includes already some contingencies which the programme of the theoretical speculator in revolutions would have been far enough from including then, when such movements were yet untried in modern history, and the philosopher had to go back to mythical Rome to borrow an historical frame of one that would contain his piece. The conviction that the crash was, perhaps, inevitable, that the overthrow of the existing usurpation, and the restoration of the English subject to his rights,—a movement then already determined on,—would perhaps involve these so tragic consequences—the conviction that the revolution was at hand, was the conviction with which he made his arrangements for the future.

But if any one would like to see now for himself what vigorous grasp of particulars this inductive science of state involves, what a clear, comprehensive, and masterly basis of history it rests on, and how totally unlike the philosophy of prenotions it is in this respect—if one would see what breadth of revolutionary surges this Artist of the peace principles was able to span with his arches and sleepers, what upheavings from the then unsounded depths of political contingencies, what upliftings from the last depths of the revolutionary abysses, this science of stability, this science of the future STATE, is settled on,—such a one must explore this work yet further, and be able to find and unroll in it that revolutionary picture which it contains—that scientific exhibition which the Elizabethan statesman has contrived to fold in it of a state in which the elements are already cleaving and separating, one in which the historical solidities are already in solution, or struggling towards it—prematurely, perhaps, and in danger of being surprised and overtaken by new combinations, not less oppressive and unscientific than the old.

'Unless philosophy can make a Juliet,
Displant a town, reverse a prince's doom,
Hang up philosophy'—

wrote this Poet's fire of old.

'Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased?'

it writes again. No?

'Throw physic to the dogs, I'll none of it.'

'See now what learning is,' says the practical-minded nurse, quite dazzled and overawed with that exhibition of it which has just been brought within her reach, and expressing, in the readiest and largest terms which her vocabulary supplies to her, her admiration of the practical bent of Friar Laurence's genius; who seems to be doing his best to illustrate the idea which another student, who was not a Friar exactly, was undertaking to demonstrate from his cell about that time—the idea of the possibility of converging a large and studious observation of nature in general,—and it is a very large and curious one which this Friar betrays,—upon any of those ordinary questions of domestic life, which are constantly recurring for private solution. And though this knowledge might seem to be 'so variable as it falleth not under precept,' the prose philosopher is of the opinion that 'a universal insight, and a wisdom of council and advice, gathered by general observation of cases of like nature,' is available for the particular instances which occur in this department. And the philosophic poet appears to be of his opinion; for there is no end to the precepts which he inducts from this 'variable knowledge' when he gets it on his table of review, in the form of natural history, in 'prerogative cases' and 'illustrious instances,' cases cleared from their accidental and extraneous adjuncts—ideal cases. And though this poor Friar does not appear to have been very successful in this particular instance; if we take into account the fact that 'the Tragedy was the thing,' and that nothing but a tragedy would serve his purpose, and that all his learning was converged on that effect; if we take into account the fact that this is a scientific experiment, and that the characters are sacrificed for the sake of the useful conclusions, the success will not perhaps appear so questionable as to throw any discredit upon this new theory of the applicability of learning to questions of this nature.

'Unless philosophy can make a Juliet.' But this is the philosophy that did that very thing, and the one that made a Hamlet also, besides 'reversing a prince's doom'; for this is the one that takes into account those very things in heaven and earth which Horatio had omitted in his abstractions; and this is the philosopher who speaks from his philosophic chair of 'men of good composition,' and who gives a recipe for composing them. 'Unless philosophy can make a Juliet,' is Romeo's word. 'See now what learning is,' is the Nurse's commentary; for that same Friar, demure as he looks now under his hood, talking of 'simples' and great nature's latent virtues, is the one that will cog the nurse's hearts from them, and come back beloved of all the trades in Rome. With his new art of 'composition' he will compose, not Juliets nor Hamlets only; mastering the radicals, he will compose, he will dissolve and recompose ultimately the greater congregation; for the powers in nature are always one, and they are not many.

Let us see now, then, what it is,—this 'universal insight in the affairs of the world,' this 'wisdom of counsel and advice, gathered from cases of a like nature,' with an observation that includes all natures,—let us see what this new wisdom of counsel is, when it comes to be applied to this huge growth of the state, this creature of the ages; and in its great crisis of disorder—shaken, convulsed— wrapped in elemental horror, and threatening to dissolve into its primal warring atoms.

'Doctor, the Thanes fly from me.'

'If thou couldst, Doctor, cast
The water of MY LAND, find her disease,
And purge it to a sound and pristine health,
I would applaud thee to the very echo,
That should applaud again.'

'What rhubarb, senna, or what purgative drug,
Would scour these English hence? Hear'st thou of them?'

'Cousins, I hope the days are near at hand
That chambers will be safe.'

Let us see, then, what it is that this man will have, who criticises so severely the learning of other men,—who disposes so scornfully, right and left, of the physic and metaphysic of the schools as he finds them,—who daffs the learning of the world aside, and bids it pass. Let us see what the learning is that is not 'words,' as Hamlet says, complaining of the reading in his book.

This part has been taken out from its dramatic connections, and reserved for a separate exhibition, on account of a certain new and peculiar value it has acquired since it was produced in those connections. Time has changed it 'into something rich and strange,'—Time has framed it, and poured her illustration on it: it is history now. That flaming portent, this aurora that fills the seer's heaven, these fierce angry warriors, that are fighting here upon the clouds, 'in ranks, and squadrons, and right forms of war,' are but the marvels of that science that lays the future open.

'There is a history in all men's lives,
Figuring the nature of the times deceased;
The which observed, a man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life, which, in their seeds
And weak beginnings, lie intreasured.
Such things become the hatch and brood of time.'

'One need not go to heaven to predict imminent changes and revolutions,' says that other philosopher, who scribbles on this same subject about these days in such an entertaining manner, and who brings so many 'buckets' from 'the headspring of sciences,' to water his plants in this field in particular. 'That which most threatens us is a divulsion of the whole mass.'

This part is produced here, then, as a specimen of that kind of prophecy which one does not need to go to heaven for. And the careful reader will observe, that notwithstanding the distinct disavowal of any supernatural gift on the part of this seer, and this frank explanation of the mystery of his Art, the prophecy appears to compare not unfavourably with others which seem to come to us with higher claims. A very useful and very remarkable kind of prophecy indeed, this inductive prophecy appears to be; and the question arises, whether a kind, endowed of God with a faculty of seeing, which commands the future in so inclusive a manner, and with so near and sufficient an aim for the most important practical purposes, ought to be besieging Heaven for a _super_natural gift, and questioning the ancient seers for some vague shadows of the coming event, instead of putting this immediate endowment—this 'godlike' endowment—under culture.

There is another reason for reserving this part. In the heat and turmoil of this great ACT, the Muse of the Inductive Science drops her mask, and she forgets to take it up again. The hand that is put forth to draw 'the next ages' into the scene, when the necessary question of the play requires it, is bare. It is the Man of Learning here everywhere, without any disguise,—the man of the new learning, openly applying his 'universal insight,' and 'wisdom of counsel and advice, gathered by general observation of cases of like nature,' to this great question of 'Policy,' which was then hurrying on, with such portentous movement, to its inevitable practical solution.

He who would see at last for himself, then, the trick of this 'Magician,' when he 'brings the rabble to his place,' the reader who would know at last why it is that these old Roman graves 'have waked their sleepers, oped, and let them forth, by his so potent art'; and why it is, that at this great crisis in English history, the noise of the old Roman battle hurtles so fiercely in the English ear, should read now—but read as a work of natural science in politics, from the scientific statesman's hands, deserves to be read—this great revolutionary scene, which the Poet, for reasons of his own, has buried in the heart of this Play, which he has subordinated with his own matchless skill to the general intention of it, but which we, for the sake of pursuing that general intention with the less interruption, now that the storm appears to be 'overblown,' may safely reserve for the conclusion of our reading of this scientific history, and criticism, and rejection of the Military Usurpation of the COMMON-WEAL.

The reading of it is very simple. One has only to observe that the Poet avails himself of the dialogue here, with even more than his usual freedom, for the purpose of disposing of the bolder passages, in the least objectionable manner,—interrupting the statement in critical points, and emphasizing it, by that interruption, to the careful reader 'of the argument,' but to the spectator, or to one who takes it as a dialogue merely, neutralizing it by that dramatic opposition. For the political criticism, which is of the boldest, passes safely enough, by being merely broken, and put into the mouths of opposing factions, who are just upon the point of coming to blows upon the stage, and cannot, therefore, be suspected of collusion.

For the popular magistracy, as it represents the ignorance, and stupidity, and capricious tyranny of the multitude, and their unfitness for rule, is subjected to the criticism of the true consulship, on the one hand, while the military usurpation of the chair of state, and the law of Conquest, is not less severely criticized by the true Tribune—the Tribune, whose Tribe is the Kind—on the other; and it was not necessary to produce, in any more prominent manner, just then, the fact, that both these offices and relations were combined in that tottering estate of the realm,—that 'old riotous form of military government,' which held then only by the virtual election of the stupidity and ignorance of the people, and which, this Poet and his friends were about to put on its trial, for its innovations in the government, and suppressions of the ancient estates of this realm,—for its suppression of the dignities and privileges of the Nobility, and its suppression of the chartered dignities and rights of the Commons.

Scene.—A Street. Cornets. Enter CORIOLANUS with his two military friends, who have shared with him the conduct of the Volscian wars, and have but just returned from their campaign, COMINIUS and TITUS LARTIUS,—and with them the old civilian MENENIUS, who, patrician as he is, on account of his honesty,—a truly patrician virtue,—is in favour with the people. 'He's an honest one. Would they were all so.'

The military element predominates in this group of citizens, and of course, they are talking of the wars,—the foreign wars: but the principle of inroad and aggression on the one hand, and defence on the other, the arts of subjugation, and reconciliation, the arts of WAR and GOVERNMENT in their most general forms are always cleared and identified, and tracked, under the specifications of the scene.

Cor. Tullus Aufidius then had made NEW HEAD.

Lart. He had, my lord, and that it was, which caused Our swifter COMPOSITION.

Cor. So then, the Volsces stand but as at first,
Ready, when time shall prompt them, to make road
Upon us again.

Com. They [Volsces?] are worn, lord consul, so That we shall hardly in our ages see Their banners wave again.

* * * * *

[Enter Sicinius and Brutus.]

Cor. Behold! these are the tribunes of the people,
The tongues o' the common mouth. I do despise them;
For they do prank them in authority,
Against all noble sufferance.

Sic. Pass no further.

Cor. Ha! what is that?

Bru. It will be dangerous to Go on: No further.

Cor. What makes this CHANGE?

Men. The matter?

Com. Hath he not passed the NOBLES and the COMMONS?

Bru. Cominius.—No.

Cor. Have I had children's voices? [ Yes.]

Sen. Tribunes, give way:—he shall to the market-place.

Bru. The people are incensed against him.

Sic. Stop. Or all will fall in broil.

Cor. Are these your herd? Must these have voices that can yield them now, And straight disclaim their tongues? You, being their mouths, why rule you not their teeth? Have you not set them on?

Men. Be calm, be calm.

Cor. It is a purposed thing, and grows by plot, To curb the will of the nobility:— Suffer it, and live with such as cannot rule, Nor ever will be ruled.

Bru. Call't not a plot: The people cry you mocked them; and of late, When corn was given them gratis, you repined; Scandaled the suppliants for the people; called them Time-pleasers, flatterers, foes to nobleness.

Cor. Why, this was known before.

Bru. Not to them all.

Cor. Have you informed them since?

Bru. How! I inform them?

Cor. You are like to do such business.

Bru. Not unlike, Each way to better yours.

Cor. Why then should I be consul? By yon clouds, Let me deserve so ill as you, and make me Your fellow tribune.

Sic. You show too much of that,
For which the people stir: If you will pass
To where you are bound, you must inquire your way,—
Which you are out of,—with a gentler spirit;
Or never be so noble as a consul,
Nor yoke with him for tribune.

Men. Let's be calm.

Com. The people are abused;—set on—this paltering
Becomes not Rome: nor has Coriolanus
Deserved this so dishonoured rub, laid falsely
I' the plain way of his merit.

Cor. Tell me of corn: This was my speech, and I will speak't again.

Men. Not now, not now.

First Sen. Not in this heat, sir, now.

Cor. Now, as I live, I will.—My nobler friends I crave their pardons:— For the mutable, rank scented many, let them Regard me, as I do not flatter, and Therein behold themselves: I say again, In soothing them, we nourish 'gainst our senate, The cockle of rebellion, insolence, sedition, Which we ourselves have ploughed for, sowed and scattered, By mingling them with us, the honoured number. Who lack not virtue, no,—nor power, but that Which they have given to—BEGGARS.

Men. Well, no more.

First Sen. No more words, we beseech you.

Cor. How, no more: As for my country, I have shed my blood, Not fearing outward force, so shall my lungs Coin words till their decay against those meazels Which we disdain, should tetter us, yet sought The very way to catch them.

Bru. You speak o' the people, As if you were a god to punish, not A man of their infirmity.

Sic. 'T were well We let the people know't.

Men. What, what? his choler.

Cor. Choler!
Were I as patient as the midnight sleep,
By Jove, 't would be my mind.

Sic. It is a mind,
That shall remain a poison where it is,
Not poison any further.

Cor. Shall remain!
Hear you this Triton of the minnows? mark you
His absolute SHALL?

Com. 'Twas from the canon,
O good, but most unwise patricians, why
You grave, but reckless senators, have you thus
Given Hydra here to choose AN OFFICER,
That with his peremptory shall—being but
The horn and noise o' the monster—wants not spirit
To say, he'll turn your current in a ditch,
And make your channel his? If he have power,
Then veil your IGNORANCE:—[that let him have it.]
—if none, awake
Your dangerous LENITY.

[Mark it well, for it is not, as one may see who looks at it but a little, it is not the lost Roman weal and its danger that fires the passion of this speech. 'Look at this player whether he has not turned his colour, and has tears in his eyes.' 'What's Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba, that he should weep for her? What would he do, had he the motive and the cue for passion that I have.']

—if none, awake
Your dangerous lenity. If you are learned,
Be not as common fools; if you are not—

What do you draw this foolish line for, that separates you from the commons? If you are not, there's no nobility. If you are not, what business have you in these chairs of state?

—if you are not,
Let them have cushions by you. You are plebeians,
If they be senators; and they are no less,
When both your voices blended, the GREATEST TASTE
Most palates theirs. They choose their magistrate;
And such a one as he, who puts his shall,—

[Mark it, his popular shall].

His popular shall, against a graver bench
Than ever frown'd in Greece! By Jove himself,
It makes the consuls base: and my soul aches,
To know, when two authorities are up,

[Neither able to rule].

Neither supreme, how soon confusion May enter twixt the GAP of BOTH, and take The one by the other.

Com. Well,—on to the market place.

Cor. Whoever gave that counsel, to give forth The corn o' the store-house gratis, as 'twas used Sometime in Greece.

[It is not corn, but the property of the state, and its appropriation, we talk of here. Whether the absolute power be in the hands of the people or 'their officer.' There had been a speech made on that subject, which had not met with the approbation of the absolute power then conducting the affairs of this realm; and in its main principle, it is repeated here. 'That was my speech, and I will make it again.' 'Not now, not now. Not in this heat, sir, now.' 'Now, as I live, I will.']

Men. Well, well, no more of that,

Cor. Though there THE PEOPLE had more absolute power, I say they nourished disobedience, fed The ruin of the state.

Bru. Why shall the people give One that speaks thus their voice?

Cor. I'll give my reasons, More worthier than their voices. They know the corn Was not our RECOMPENSE; resting well assured They ne'er did service for it? . . . Well, what then? How shall this bosom multiplied, digest; The senate's courtesy? Let deeds express What's like to be their words. We did request it, WE are THE GREATER POLL, and in true fear They gave us our demands. Thus we debase The nature of our seats, and make the rabble Call our cares, fears: which will in time break ope The locks o' the senate, and bring in the crows To peck the eagles.

Mem. Come, enough.

Bru. Enough, with over measure.

Cor. No, take more;
What may be sworn by, both divine and human,
Seal what I end withal! This double worship,—
Where one part does disdain with cause, the other
Insult without all reason; where gentry, title, wisdom,
Cannot conclude, but by the yea and no
Of General Ignorance—it must omit
Real necessities, and give way the while
To unstable slightness. PURPOSE so barred it follows
Nothing is done to purpose: Therefore beseech you,—

[Therefore beseech you].

You that will be less fearful than discreet;
That love the fundamental part of state,
More than you doubt the change of't—

There was but one man in England then, able to balance this revolutionary proposition so nicely—so curiously; 'that love the fundamental part of state more than you doubt the change of it'; 'You that are less fearful than discreet'—not so fearful as discreet.

that prefer
A noble life before a long, and wish
To jump a body with a dangerous physic
That's sure of death without it,—at once pluck out
The multitudinous tongue; let them not lick
The sweet which is their poison; your dishonour
MANGLES true JUDGMENT, and bereaves THE STATE
Of that INTEGRITY which should become it:
Not having the power to do the good it would,
For the ill which doth control it.

Bru. He has said enough.

[One would think so].

Sic. He has spoken like a traitor, and shall answer As traitors do.

Cor. Thou wretch! despite o'erwhelm thee!
What should the people do with these bald tribunes?
On whom depending, their obedience fails
To the greater bench? In a rebellion,
When what's not meet, but what must be was law
Then were they chosen: in a better hour,
Let what is meet, be said it must be meet,
And throw their power i' the dust.

Bru. MANIFEST TREASON.

Sic. This a Consul? No.

Bru. The Aediles! ho! let him be apprehended.

Sic. Go call the people; [Exit Brutus] in whose name, myself
Attach thee [thee] as a traitorous INNOVATOR,
A FOE to the PUBLIC WEAL. Obey, I charge thee,
And follow to thine answer.

Cor. Hence, old goat!
Senators and Patricians. We'll surety him.

Cor. Hence, rotten thing, or I shall shake thy bones
Out of thy garments.

Sic. Help, ye citizens.

[Re-enter Brutus, with the Aediles, and a rabble of citizens.]

Men. On both sides, more respect.

Sic. There's HE that would Take from you all your power.

Bru. Seize him, Aediles.

Cit. Down with him. Down with him.

[Several speak.]

Second Sen. Weapons! Weapons! Weapons!

[They all bustle about CORIOLANUS.]

Tribunes, patricians:—citizens:—what ho:—
Sicinius, Brutus:—Coriolanus:—citizens:—

Cit. Peace!—Peace!—Peace!—stay!—hold!—peace!

Men. What is about to be? I am out of breath:
Confusion's near! I cannot speak: you tribunes
To the people.—Coriolanus, patience:—
Speak, good Sicinius.

Sic. Hear me, people;—Peace.

Cit. Let's hear our tribune:—Peace,—Speak, speak, speak.

Sic. You are at point to lose your liberties, Marcius would have all from you; Marcius Whom late you have named for consul.

Men. Fye, fye, fye. That is the way to kindle, not to quench.

Sen. To unbuild the city and to lay all flat.

Sic. What is the city, but the people.

Cit. TRUE,
The people are the city.

Bru. By the consent of ALL, we were established
The people's magistrates.

Cit. You so remain.

Men. And so are like to do.

Cor. That is the way to lay the city flat,
To bring the roof to the foundation;
And bury all which yet distinctly ranges,
In heaps and piles of ruin.

Sic. This deserves death.

Bru. Or let us stand to our authority, Or let us lose it:—

Truly, one hears the Revolutionary voices here. Observing the history which is in all men's lives, 'Figuring the nature of the times deceased, a man may prophesy,' as it would seem, 'with a near aim,'—quite near—'of the main chance of things, as yet, not come to life, which in their weak beginnings lie intreasured. Such things become the hatch and brood of time,' this Poet says; but art, it seems, anticipates that process. There appears to be more of the future here, than of the times deceased.

Bru. We do here pronounce
Upon the part of the people, in whose power
We were elected theirs, Marcius is worthy
Of present death.

Sic. Therefore, lay hold of him;
Bear him to the rook Tarpeian, and from thence
Into destruction cast him.

Bru. Ædiles, seize him.

Cit. Yield, Marcius, yield.

Men. Hear me, one word. Beseech you, tribunes, hear me, but a word.

Ædiles. Peace, peace.

Men. Be that you seem, truly your country's friend,
And temperately proceed to what you would
Thus violently redress.

Bru. Sir, those cold ways
That seem like prudent helps, are very poisonous.
Where the disease is violent.—Lay hands upon him,
And bear him to the rock.

Cor. No: I'll die here. [Drawing his sword.]
There's some among you have beheld me fighting;
Come try upon yourselves, what you have seen me.

Men. DOWN with THAT SWORD; tribunes, withdraw awhile.

Bru. Lay hands upon him.

Men. Help, help, MARCIUS, help! You that be NOBLE, help him, young and old.

Cit. DOWN WITH HIM! DOWN WITH HIM!

'In this mutiny, the Tribunes, the Ædiles, and the People, are all BEAT IN,' so the stage direction informs us, which appears a little singular, considering there is but one sword drawn, and the victorious faction does not appear to have the advantage in numbers. It is, however, only a temporary success, as the victors seem to be aware.

Men. Go, get you to your houses, be gone away, All will be nought else.

Second Sen. Get you gone.

Cor. Stand fast, We have as many friends as enemies.

Men. Shall it be put to that?

Sen. The gods forbid! I pry'thee noble friend, home to thy house; Leave us to CURE THIS CAUSE.

Men. For 'tis a sore upon us, You cannot tent yourself. Begone, beseech you.

Com. Come, Sir, along with us.

Cor. I would they were barbarians (as they are,
Though in Rome littered) not Romans, (as they are not,
Though calved i' the porch o' the Capitol).

Men. Begone; Put not your worthy rage into your tongue; One time will owe another. [Hear.]

Cor. On fair ground, I could beat forty of them.

Men. I could myself Take up a brace of the best of them; yea, the two tribunes.

Com. But now 'tis odds beyond arithmetic:
And MANHOOD is called FOOLERY, when it stands
Against a falling fabric.—Will you hence,
Before the tag return? whose rage doth rend
Like interrupted waters, and o'erbear
What they are used to bear. [Change of 'predominance.']

Men. Pray you, begone:
I'll try whether my old wit be in request
With those that have but little; this must be patched
With cloth of any colour.

Com. Nay, come away.

The features of that living impersonation of the heroic faults and virtues which 'the mirror,' that professed to give to 'the very body of the time, its form and pressure,' could not fail to show, are glimmering here constantly in 'this ancient piece,' and often shine out in the more critical passages, with such unmistakeable clearness, as to furnish an effectual diversion for any eye, that should undertake to fathom prematurely the player's intention. For 'the gentleman who wrote the late Shepherd's Calendar' was not the only poet of this time, as it would seem, who found the scope of a double intention, in his poetic representation, not adequate to the comprehension of his design—who laid on another and another still, and found the complexity convenient. 'The sense is the best judge,' this Poet says, in his doctrine of criticism, declining peremptorily to accept of the ancient rules in matters of taste;—a rule in art which requires, of course, a corresponding rule of interpretation. In fact, it is no bad exercise for an ordinary mind, to undertake to track the contriver of these plays, through all the latitudes which his art, as he understands it, gives him. It is as good for that purpose, as a problem in mathematics. But, 'to whom you will not give an hour, you give nothing,' he says, and 'he had as lief not be read at all, as be read by a careless reader.' So he thrusts in his meanings as thick as ever he likes, and those who don't choose to stay and pick them out, are free to lose them. They are not the ones he laid them in for,—that is all. He is not afraid, but that he will have readers enough, ere all is done; and he can afford to wait. There's time enough.

First Pat. This man has marr'd his fortune.

Men. His nature is too noble for the world: He would not flatter Neptune for his trident, Or Jove for his power to thunder. His heart's his mouth; What his breast forges, that his tongue must vent; And being angry, does forget that ever He heard the name of death.

[A noise within.]

Here's goodly work!

Second Pat. I would they were a-bed!

Men. I would they were in Tyber!—What, the vengeance, Could he not speak them fair?

[Re-enter Brutus and Sicinius with the Rabble.]

Sic. WHERE IS THIS VIPER, That would depopulate the city, and BE EVERY MAN HIMSELF?

Men. You worthy tribunes—

Sic. He shall be thrown down the Tarpeian rock With rigorous hands; he hath resisted LAW, And therefore law shall scorn him further trial.

['When could they say till now that talked of Rome that her wide walls encompassed but one man?' 'What trash is Rome, what rubbish, and what offal, when it serves for the base matter to illuminate so vile a thing as Caesar.']

Than the severity of the PUBLIC POWER, Which he so sets at nought.

First Cit. He shall well know The noble tribunes are the people's mouths, And we their hands.

[Historical _principles throughout, with much of that kind of illustration in which his works are so prolific, an illustration which is not rhetorical, but scientific, based on the COMMON PRINCIPLES IN NATURE, which it is his 'primary' business to ascend to, and which it is his 'second' business to apply to each particular branch of art. 'Neither,' as he tells us plainly, in his Book of Advancement, 'neither are these only similitudes as men of narrow observation may conceive them to be, but the same footsteps of nature, treading or printing upon several subjects or matters,' and the tracking of these historical principles to their ultimate forms, is that which he recommends for the disclosing of nature and the abridging of Art.]

Sic. He's a disease, that must be cut away.

Men. O he's a limb, that has but a disease; Mortal to cut it off; to cure it, easy. What has he done to Rome, that's worthy death? Killing our enemies? The blood he hath lost, (Which, I dare vouch, is more than that he hath, By many an ounce), he dropped it for his country. And what is left, to lose it by his country, Were to us all, that do't and suffer it, A brand to the end o' the world.

There's a piece thrust in here. This is the one of whom he says in another scene, 'I cannot speak him home.'

Bru. Merely awry: when he did love his country,
It honour'd him.

Men. The service of the foot, Being once gangren'd, is not then respected For what before it was?

Bru. We'll hear no more:— Pursue him to his house, and pluck him thence; Lest his infection, being of catching nature, Spread further.

Men. One word more, one word.
This tiger-footed rage, when it shall find
The harm of unscann'd swiftness, will, too late,
Tie leaden pounds to his HEELS. [Mark it, for it is a
prophecy]
Lest PARTIES (as he is beloved) break out,
And sack great Rome with Romans.

Bru. If it were so,—

Sic. What do ye talk? Have we not had a taste of his obedience? Our Ædiles smote? Ourselves resisted?—Come:—

Men. Consider this; he has been bred i' the wars, Since he could draw a sword,—

That has been the breeding of states, and nobility, and their rule, hitherto, as this play will show you. Consider what schooling these statesmen have had, before you begin the enterprise of reforming them, and take your measures accordingly. They are not learned men, you see. How should they be? There has been no demand for learning. The law of the sword has prevailed hitherto. When what's not meet but what must be was law, then were they chosen. Proceed by process.

Consider this; he has been bred i' the WARS Since he could draw a sword, and is ill school'd In boulted language—

[That's the trouble; but there's been a little bolting going on in this play.]

—Meal and bran, together
He throws without distinction. Give me leave
I'll go to him, and undertake to bring him
Where he shall answer by a lawful form,
(In peace) to his utmost peril.

First Sen. Noble tribunes.
It is the humane way: the other course
Will prove too bloody; and—

[What is very much to be deprecated in such movements].

—the END of it, Unknown to the beginning.

Sic. Noble Menenius; Be you then as the People's Officer: Masters,—[and they seem to be that, truly,]—lay down your weapons.

Bru. Go not home,

Sic. MEET on the MARKET-PLACE,—

[—that is where the 'idols of the market' are—]

We'll attend you there:
Where, if you bring not Marcius, we'll proceed
In our first way.

Men. I'll bring him to you.
Let me desire your company [To the Senators] He must come,
Or what is worse will follow.

Sen. Pray you, let's to him.

SCENE—THE FORUM. Enter Sicinius and Brutus.

Bru. In this point charge him home, that he affects
TYRANNICAL POWER: if he evade us there,
Enforce him with his envy to the people;
And that the spoil, got on the Antiates,
Was ne'er distributed.—

Enter an Ædile.
What, will he come?

Æd. He's coming.

Bru. How accompanied?

Æd. With old Menenius, and those senators That always favour'd him.

Sic. Have you a catalogue Of all the voices that we have procured, Set down by THE POLL?

Æd. I have; 'tis ready.

Sic. Have you collected them BY TRIBES?

Æd. I have.

Sic. Assemble presently the people hither: And when they hear me say, it shall be so I the RIGHT and STRENGTH o' the COMMONS, be it either For death, for fine, or banishment, then let them, If I say fine, cry fine; if death, cry death; Insisting on the OLD _prerogative, And power i' THE TRUTH, o' THE CAUSE.

[There is a great difference in the delivery of the mathematics, which are the most abstracted of knowledges, and policy, which is the most immersed.—Advancement of LEARNING.]

Æd. I shall inform them.

Bru. And when such time they have begun to cry,
Let them not cease, but with a din confused
Enforce the present execution
Of what we chance to sentence.

Æd. Very well.

Sic. Make them be strong, and ready for this hint. When we shall hap to give't them.

Bru. Go about it.

[Exit Ædile.]

Put him to choler straight. He hath been used
Ever to conquer, and to have his worth
Of contradiction. Being once chafed, he cannot
Be rein'd again to temperance; then he speaks
What's in his heart; and that is there, which looks
With me to break his neck. [Prophecy—inductive.]
Well, here he comes.

Enter CORIOLANUS, and his party.

Men. Calmly, I do beseech you.

Cor. Ay, as an ostler, that for the poorest piece Will bear the knave by the volume. The honour'd gods Keep Rome in safety, and the CHAIRS of JUSTICE Supplied with WORTHY MEN! plant LOVE among us. Throng OUR LARGE TEMPLES with the shows of PEACE, And not our STREETS with WAR.

First Sen. Amen, Amen! [Hear, Hear!]

Men. A NOBLE wish.

Re-enter Ædile with Citizens.

Sic. Draw near, ye people.

Cor. First hear me speak.

Ædile. List to your tribunes. Audience: Peace, I say.

Both Tri. Well, say,—Peace, ho.

Cor. Shall I be charged no further than this present?
Must all determine here?

Sic. I do demand,
If you submit you to the people's voices,
Allow their officers, and are content
To suffer lawful censure for such faults
As shall be proved upon you?

Cor. I am content.

Men. Lo, citizens, he says he is content—

Cor. What is the matter,
That being pass'd for consul, with full voice,
I am so dishonour'd, that the very hour
You take it off again?

Sic. Answer to us.

Cor. Say then,'tis true. I ought so.

Sic. WE CHARGE YOU, that you have contrived to take
From Rome, all seasoned office, and to wind
Yourself into a_ POWER TYRANNICAL;
For which, you are A TRAITOR to the PEOPLE.

Cor. How! Traitor?

Men. Nay, temperately: Your promise.

Cor. The fires in the lowest hell fold in the people! Call me their traitor!

Cit. To the rock, to the rock with him.

Sic. Peace.
We need not put new matter to his charge:
What you have seen him do, and heard him speak,
Beating your officers, cursing yourselves,
Opposing laws with strokes, and here defying
Those whose great power must try him; even THIS,
So criminal, and in such CAPITAL kind,
Deserves the extremest death….
For that he has,
As much as in him lies, from time to time,
Envied against the people; seeking means
To pluck away their power: as now, at last,
Given hostile strokes, and that, not in the presence
Of dreaded justice, but on the ministers
That do distribute it; in the name o' the people,
And in the power of us, the tribunes, we,
Even from this instant, banish him our city,
In peril of precipitation
From off the rock Tarpeian, never more
To enter our Rome's gates. I' THE PEOPLE'S NAME
I say it shall be so.

Cit. It shall be so, it shall be so: let him away,
He's banish'd, and it shall be so.

Com. Hear me, MY MASTERS, and my COMMON FRIENDS.

Sic. HE'S SENTENCED: no more hearing.

Com. Let me speak:—

Bru. THERE'S NO MORE TO BE SAID, BUT HE IS BANISHED, As ENEMY to the PEOPLE, AND HIS COUNTRY: IT SHALL BE SO.

Cit. IT SHALL BE SO, IT SHALL BE SO.

And this is the story that was set before a king! One, too, who was just then bestirring himself to get the life of 'that last king of England who was his ancestor' brought out; a king who was taking so much pains to get his triple wreath of conquest brightened up, and all the lines in it laid out and distinguished—one who was taking so much pains to get the fresh red of that last 'conqueror,' who also 'came in by battle,' cleared up in his coat of arms, in case his double line of white and red from the old Norman should not prove sufficient— sufficient to convince the English nation of his divine right, and that of his heirs for ever, to dispose of it and its weal at his and their pleasure, with or without laws, as they should see fit. A pretty scene this to amuse a king with, whose ancestor, the one from whom he directly claimed, had so lately seated himself and his line by battle- -by battle with the English people on those very questions; who had 'beaten them in' in their mutinies with his single sword, 'and taken all from them'; who had planted his chair of state on their suppressed liberties, and 'the charters that they bore in the body of the weal'— that chair which was even then beginning to rock a little—while there was that in the mien and bearing of the royal occupant and his heir which might have looked to the prescient mind, if things went on as they were going then, not unlike to break some one's neck.

'Bid them home,'

says the Tribune, after the military hero is driven out by the uprisen people, with shouting, from the city gates for ever; charged never more to enter them, on peril of precipitation from the Tarpeian Rock.

'Bid them home:
Say, their great enemy is gone, and THEY
STAND in their ancient strength.'

But it is in the conquered nation that this scene of the deposing of the military power is completed. Of course one could not tell beforehand what effect that cautious, but on the whole luminous, exhibition of the recent conquest of the English PEOPLE, prepared at the suggestion and under the immediate criticism of royalty, might have with the profoundly loyal English people themselves, in the way of 'striking an awe into them,' and removing any lurking opposition they might have to the exercise of an arbitrary authority in government; but with people of the old Volscian pluck, according to this Poet's account of the matter, an allusion to a similar success on the part of the Conqueror at a critical moment, and when his special qualifications for government happened to be passing under review, was not attended with those happy results which appear to have been expected in the other instance.

'If you have writ your annals true, 't is there, That like an EAGLE in a dove-cote, I Flutter'd your Volsces in Corioli: Alone, I did it.' 'Why—

[The answer is, in this case,]

'Why, noble lords, Will you be put in mind of his blind fortune, Which was your shame, by this unholy braggart, 'Fore your own eyes and ears?

Cons. Let him die for't. [Several speak at once.]

Citizens [Speaking promiscuously]. Tear him to pieces; do it presently. He killed my son—my daughter;—he killed my cousin Marcus;—he killed my father…. O that I had him, With six Aufidiuses, or more, his tribe, To use my lawful sword. Insolent villain! …Traitor!—how now?…. Ay, TRAITOR, Marcius. Marcius? Ay, Marcius, Caius Marcius. Dost thou think I'll grace thee with that ROBBERY—thy STOLEN NAME, Coriolanus, in CORIOLI?…. […. Honest, my lord? 'Ay, honest.']

Cons. Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill him.' 'Would you proceed especially against Caius Marcius? Against him FIRST.'

Surely, if that 'Heir apparent' to whom the History of HENRY THE SEVENTH was dedicated by the author, with an urgent recommendation of the 'rare accidents' in that reign to the royal notice and consideration; if that prince had but chanced in some thoroughly thoughtful mood to light upon this yet more 'ancient piece,' he might have found here, also, some things worthy of his notice. It cannot be denied, that the poet's mode of handling the same historical question is much more bold and clear than that of the professed philosopher. But probably this Prince was not aware that his father entertained at Whitehall then, not a literary Historian, merely—a Book-maker, able to compose narratives of the past in an orderly chronological prosaic manner, according to the received method—but a Show-man, also, an Historical Show-man, with such new gifts and arts; a true Magician, who had in his closet a mirror which possessed the property of revealing, not the past nor the present only, but the future, 'with a near aim,' an aim so near that it might well seem 'magical'; and that a cloud was flaming in it, even then, 'which drizzled blood upon the Capitol.' This Prince of Wales did not know, any more than his father did, that they had in their court then an historical scholar, with such an indomitable passion for the stage, with such a decided turn for acting—one who felt himself divinely prompted to a part in that theatre which is the Globe—one who had laid out all for his share in that. They did not either of them know, fortunately for us, that they had in their royal train such an Historic Sport-Manager, such a Prospero for Masques; that there was a true 'Phil-harmonus' there, with so clear an inspiration of scientific statesmanship. They did not know that they had in that servant of the crown, so supple, so 'patient—patient as the midnight sleep,' patient 'as the ostler that for the poorest piece will bear the knave by the volume'—such a born aspirant for rule; one who had always his eye on the throne, one who had always in mind their usurpation of it. They did not know that they had a Hamlet in their court, who never lost sight of his purpose, or faltered in his execution of it; who had found a scientific ground for his actions, an end for his ends; who only affected incoherence; and that it was he who was intriguing to such purpose with the PLAYERS.

The Elizabethan revolutionist was suppressed: then 'Fame, who is the posthumous sister of rebellion, sprang up.'

'O like a book of sports thou'lt read me o'er,
But there's more in me than thou'lt understand.'

'Henceforth guard thee well,
For I'll not kill thee there, nor there, nor there;
But by the forge that stithied Mars his helm,
I'll kill thee everywhere, yea o'er and o'er.'

CHAPTER XIII.

CONCLUSION.

'How I have thought of this, and of these times, I shall recount hereafter, . . . . . . . . and find a time Both meet to hear and answer such high things. Till then, my noble friend, chew upon this; Brutus had rather he a villager, Than to repute himself a son of Rome, Under these hard conditions as this time Is like to lay upon us.

Inasmuch as the demonstration contained in this volume has laboured throughout under this disadvantage, that however welcome that new view of the character and aims of the great English philosopher, which is involved in it, as welcome it must be to all true lovers of learning, it presents itself to the mind of the reader as a view directly opposed, not merely to what may possibly be his own erroneous preconceptions of the case; but to facts which are among the most notable in the history of this country; and not only to facts sustained by unquestionable contemporary authority, and attested by public documents,—facts which history has graven with her pen of iron in the rock for ever, but with other exhibitions of this man's character, not less, but more painful, for which he is himself singly responsible;—not the forced exhibition of a confession wrung from him by authority,—not the craven self-blasting defamation of a glorious name that was not his to blast,—that was the property of men of learning in all coming ages, precious and venerable in their eyes for ever, at the bidding of power,—not that only, but the voluntary exhibition of those qualities with which he stands charged,—which he has gone out of his way to leave to us,—memorials of them which he has collected with his own hands, and sealed up, and sent down to posterity 'this side up,' with the most urgent directions to have them read, and examined, and considered deeply,—that posterity, too, to which he commends, with so much assurance, the care of his honor, the cure of his fame.

The demonstrated fact must stand. The true mind must receive it. Because our criticism or our learning is not equal to the task of reconciling it with that which we know already, or with that which we believed, and thought we knew, we must not on that account reject it. That is to hurt ourselves. That is to destroy the principle of integrity at its source. We must take our facts and reconcile them, if we can; and let them take care of themselves, if we can not. God is greater than we are, and whatever other sacrifices he may require of us, painful to our human sensibilities, to make way with facts, for the sake of advancing truths, or for any other reason never so plausible, is a thing which he never does, and never did require of any mind. The conclusion that requires facts to be dispensed with, or shorn, on either side to make it tenable, is not going to stand, let it come in what name, or with what authority it will; because the truth of history is, in its least particular, of a universal quality, and is much more potent than anything that the opinion and will of man can oppose to it.

To the mind which is able to receive under all conditions the demonstrated truth, and give to it its full weight,—to the mind to which truth is religion, this book is dedicated. The facts which it contains are able to assert themselves,—will be, at least, hereafter. They will not be dependent ultimately upon the mode of their exhibition here. For they have the large quality, they have the solidity and dimensions of historical truth, and are accessible on more sides than one.

But to those to whom they are already able to commend themselves in the form in which they are here set forth, the author begs leave to say, in conclusion, though it must stand for the present in the form of a simple statement, but a statement which challenges investigation, that so far from coming into any real collision with the evidence which we have on this subject from other sources, those very facts, and those very historical materials on which our views on this subject have been based hitherto, are, that which is wanting to the complete development of the views contained here.

It is the true history of these great events in which the hidden great men of this age played so deep a part; it is the true history of that great crisis in which the life-long plots of these hidden actors began to show themselves on the historic surface in scenic grandeur,—in those large tableaux which history takes and keeps,—which history waits for,—it is the very evidence which has supplied the principal basis of the received views on this subject,—it is the history of the initiation of that great popular movement,—that movement of new ages, with which the chief of popular development, and the leader of these ages, has been hitherto so painfully connected in our impressions; it is that very evidence,—that blasting evidence which the Learning of the Modern Ages has always carried in its stricken heart,—it is that which is wanting here. That also is a part of the story which has begun to be related here.

And those very letters which have furnished 'confirmations strong as proofs of holy writ' of the impressions which the other historical evidence, as it stands at present, inevitably creates,—those very letters which have been collected by the party whose character was concerned in them, and preserved with so much diligence and caution,—which we have been asked with so much emphasis to read and ponder,—which have been recommended to our attention as the very best means, when all is done, of putting ourselves into sympathetic relations with the writer, and attaining at last to a complete understanding of his position, and to a complete acquaintance with his character and aims,—with his natural dispositions, as well as his deliberate scientific aims,—these letters, long as we have turned from them,—often as we have turned from them,—chilled, confounded, sick at heart,—unable, in spite of those recommendations, to find in them any gleam of the soul of these proceedings,—these very letters will have to be read, after all, and with that very diligence which the directions enjoin upon us; they will have, when all is done, to take just that place in the development of this plot which the author, who always knows what he is about when he is giving directions, designed them to take. There is one very obvious reason why they should be studied—why they would have to be studied in the end. They have on the face of them a claim to the attention of the learned. There is nothing like them in the history of mankind. For, however mean and disreputable the acts of men may be, when it comes to words,—that medium of understanding and sympathy, in which the identity of the common nature is perpetually declared, even in the most private conferences,—there is usually an attempt to clothe the forlorn and shrinking actuality with the common human dignity, or to make it, at least, passably respectable, if the claim to the heroic is dispensed with,—even in oral speech. But in writing, in letters, destined to never so brief and limited an existence, who puts on paper for the eye of another, for the review of that criticism which in the lowest, basest of mankind, stands in unimpeachable dignity, prepared to detect and pass sentence, and cry out as one aggrieved, on the least failure, or shadow of failure in the best—who puts in writing,—what tenant of Newgate will put on paper, when it comes to that, a deliberate display of meanness,—what convicted felon, but will undertake in that case to give some sort of heroic colour to his proceedings—some air of suffering virtue to his durance?

But a great man, consciously great, who knows that his most trifling letter is liable to publication; a great man, writing on subjects and occasions which insure publicity to his writing; a man of fame, writing letters expressly for publication, and dedicating them to the far-off times; a man of poetic sensibilities, alive to the finest shades of moral differences; one of unparalleled dignity and grandeur of aims—aims pursued from youth to age, without wavering, under the most difficult conditions, pursued to their successful issue; a man whose aim in life it was to advance, and ennoble, and enrich his kind; in whose life-success the race of men are made glad; such a one sending down along with the works, in which the nobility and the deliberate worth and grandeur of his ends are set forth and proved, memorials of himself which exhibit studiously on the surface of them, by universal consent, the most odious character in history; this is the phenomenon which our men of learning have found themselves called upon to encounter here. To separate the man and the philosopher—to fly out upon the man, to throw him overboard with every expression of animosity and disgust, to make him out as bad as possible, to collect diligently every scrap of evidence against him, and set it forth with every conceivable aggravation—this has been the resource of an indignant scholarship in this case, bent on uttering its protest in some form; this has been the defence of learning, cast down from its excellency, and debased in all men's eyes, as it seemed for ever, in the person of its high-priest.

The objection to the work here presented to the public is, that it does not go far enough. From the point of review that the research of which it is the fruit has now attained, this is the criticism to which it appears to be liable. From this point of view, the complaint to be made against it is, that at the place where it stops it leaves, for want of that part of the evidence which contains it, the historical grandeur of our great men unrevealed or still obscured. For we have had them, in the sober day-light of our occidental learning, in the actualities of history, and not in the mists of a poetic past only—monstrous idealisms, outstretched shadows of man's divinity, demi-gods and heroes, impersonations of ages and peoples, stalking through the twilight of the ante-historic dawn, or in the twilight of a national popular ignorance, embalmed in the traditions of those who are always 'beginners.' We have had them; we need not look to a foreign and younger race for them; we have them, fruit of our own stock; we have had them, not cloaked with falseness, but exposed in the searching noonday glare of our western science. We have had them, we have them still, with all their mortal frailty and littleness and ignorance confessed, with all their 'weaved-up follies ravelled out,' with all the illimitable capacity of affection and passion and will in man, with all his illimitable capacity for folly and wrong-doing, assumed and acknowledged in their own persons, symbolically, vicariously, assumed and confessed. 'I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious; with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in.' We have them, our Interpreters, our Poets, our Reformers, who start from the actualities—from the actualities of nature in general, and of the human nature in particular—who make the most careful study of man as he is, in themselves and in all men, the basis of their innovation, the beginning of their advancement to the ideal or divine. We have them; and they, too, they also come to us, with that old garland of glory on their brows, with that same 'crown' of victory, which the world has given from of old to those who have taken her affairs to be their business.

That the historical evidence which lies on the surface of an age, like that age from which our modern philosophy proceeds, is of a kind to require, for its unravelling, a different species of criticism from that which suffices for the historical evidence which our own times and institutions produce, is a fact which would hardly seem to require any illustration in the present state of our historical knowledge, in the present state of our knowledge in regard to the history of this age in particular; when not the professed scholar only, but every reader, knows what age in the constitutional history of England, at least, that age was; when we have here, not the erudite historian only, with his rich harvests for the scholar, that are caviare to the multitude, but the Poets of history also, wresting from dull prose and scholasticism its usurped domains, and giving back to the peoples their own, to tell us what age this was. The inner history of this time is indeed still wanting to us; and the reason is, that we have not yet applied to the reading of its principal documents that key of times which our contemporary historians have already put into our hands—that key which, we are told on good authority, is, in certain cases, indispensable to the true interpretation.

That the direct contemporary testimony on which history depends is, in this case, vitiated, tainted at its source, and through all its details—that the documents are all of them, on the face of them, 'suspicious,' and not fit to be received as historical evidence without the severest scrutiny and re-examination—this is the fact which remains to be taken into the account here. For this is a case in which the witnesses come into court, making signs, seeking with mute gesticulation to attract our attention, pointing significantly to the difficulties of the position, asking to be cross-examined, soliciting a second cogitation on what they say, telling us that they mortally hate obscurity, and would avoid it if they could; intimating that if their testimony should be re-examined in a higher court, and when the Star Chamber and the Court of Ecclesiastical Commission are no longer in session, it might perhaps be found to be susceptible of a different reading. This is a case in which the party convicted comes in with his finger on his lips, and an appeal to another tribunal, to another age.

We all know what age in the history of the immemorial liberties and dignities of a race—what age in the history of its recovered liberties, rescued from oppression and recognised and confirmed by statute, this was. We know it was an age in which the decisions of the Bench were prescribed to it by a power that had 'the laws of England at its commandment,' that it was an age in which Parliament, and the press, and the pulpit, were gagged, and in which that same justice had charge, diligent charge 'of amusements also, and of those who only played at working.' That this was a time when the Play House itself,—in that same year, too, in which these philosophical plays began first to attract attention, and again and again, was warned off by express ordinances from the whole ground of 'the forbidden questions.' We know that this was an age in which not the books of the learned only were subjected to 'the press and torture which expulsed' from them all those 'particulars that point to action'—action, at least, in which the common-weal of men is most concerned; that it was a time when the private manuscript was subjected to that same censorship and question, and corrected with those same instruments and engines, which made then a regular part of the machinery of the press; when the most secret cabinet of the Statesman and the Man of Letters must be kept in order for that revision, when his most confidential correspondence, his private note-book and diary must be composed under these restrictions; when in the church, not the pulpit only, but the secrets of the study, were explored for proofs of opposition to the power then predominant; when the private desk and drawers of the poor obscure country clergyman were ransacked, and his half-formed studies of sermons, his rude sketches and hypothetical notes of sermons yet to be—which might or might not be—put down for private purposes perhaps, and never intended to be preached—were produced by Government as an excuse for subjecting him to indignities and cruelties to which those practised upon the Duke of Kent and the Duke of Gloster, in the play, formed no parallel.

To the genius of a race in whose mature development speculation and action were for the first time systematically united, in the intensities of that great historical impersonation which signalises its first entrance upon the stage of human affairs, stimulated into preternatural activity by that very opposition which would have shut it out from its legitimate fields, and shut it up within those impossible, insufferable limits that the will of the one man prescribed to it then,—to that many-sided genius, bent on playing well its part even under those conditions, all the more determined on it by that very opposition—kept in mind of its manliness all the time by that all comprehending prohibition on manhood, that took charge of every act—irritated all the time into a protesting human dignity by the perpetual meannesses prescribed to it, instructed in the doctrine of the human nature and its nobility in the school of that sovereignty which was keeping such a costly 'crib' here then; 'Let a beast be lord of beasts,' says Hamlet, 'and your crib shall stand at the king's mess;' 'Would you have me false to my nature? says another, 'rather say I play the man I am'; to that so conscious man, playing his part under these hard conditions, on a stage so high; knowing all the time what theatre that was he played it in, how 'far' those long-drawn aisles extended; what 'far-off' crowding ages filled them, watching his slightest movements; who knew that he was acting 'even in the eyes of all posterity that wear this world out to the ending doom'; to such a one studying out his part beforehand under such conditions, it was not one disguise only, it was not one secret literary instrumentality only, that sufficed for the plot of it. That toy stage which he seized and converted so effectually to his ends, with all its masks did not suffice for the exigencies of this speaker's speech, 'who came prepared to speak well,' and 'to give to his speech a grace by action.'

Under these circumstances, the art of letter-writing presented itself to this invention, as a means of accomplishing objects to which other forms of writing did not admit then of being so readily adapted. It offered itself to this invention as a means of conducting certain plots, which inasmuch as they had the weal of men for their object, were necessarily conducted with secresy then. The whole play of that dramatic genius which shaped our great dramatic poems, came out, not on the stage, but in these 'plots' in which the weal of the unborn generations of men was the end; those plots for the relief of man's estate which had to be plotted, like murders and highway robberies, then, by bandits that had watch-words, and 'badges' and signals and private names, and a secret slang of their own.

The minds that conducted this enterprise under these conditions, were minds conscious of powers equal, at least, to those of the Greeks, and who thought they had as good a right to invent new methods of literary communication, or to convert old ones to new uses as the Greeks had in their day.

The speaker for this school was one who could not see why it was not just as lawful for the moderns to 'invent new measures in verses,' at least, as in 'dances,' and why it was not just as competent for him to compose 'supposititious' letters for his purposes, as it was for Thucydides to compose speeches for his; and though eloquence was, in this case, for the most part, dispensed with, these little every-day prosaic unassuming, apparently miscellaneous, scraps of life and business, shewing it up piece-meal as it was in passage, and just as it happened in which, of course, no one would think of looking for a comprehensive design, became, in the hands of this artist, an invention quite as effective as the oratory of the ancient.

The letters which came out on the trial of Essex, in the name of Sir Antony Bacon, but in which the hand of Mr. Francis Bacon appeared without much attempt at disguise, were not the only documents of that kind for which the name of the elder brother, with his more retiring and less 'dangerous' turn of mind, appeared to be, on the whole, the least objectionable. An extensive correspondence, which will tend to throw some light on the contemporary aspect of things when it is opened, was conducted in that gentleman's name, about those days.

But much more illustrious persons, who were forced by the genius of this dramatist into his plots, were induced to lend their names and sanction to these little unobtrusive performances of his, when occasion served. This was a gentleman who was in the habit of writing letters and arranging plots, for quite the most distinguished personages of his time. In fact, his powers were greatly in request for that purpose. For so far as the question of mere ability was concerned, it was found upon experiment, that there was nothing he stopped at. Under a sharp pressure, and when the necessary question of the Play required it, and nothing else would serve, it was found that he could compose 'a sonnet' as well as a state paper, or a decision, or a philosophical treatise. He wrote a sonnet for Essex, addressed to Queen Elizabeth, on one very important occasion. If it was not any better than those attempts at lyrical expression in another department of song, which he has produced as a specimen of his poetical abilities in general, it is not strange that Queen Elizabeth, who was a judge of poetry, should find herself able to resist the blandishments of that effusion. But it was not the royal favourite only, it was not Essex and Buckingham only, who were glad to avail themselves of these so singular gifts, devoted to their use by one who was understood to have no other object in living, but to promote their ends,—one whose vast philosophic aims,—aims already propounded in all their extent and grandeur, propounded from the first, as the ends to which the whole scheme of his life was to be—artistically—with the strong hand of that mighty artist, through all its detail subordinated, were supposed to be merged, lost sight of, forgotten in an irrepressible enthusiasm of devotion to the wishes of the person who happened, at the time, to be the sovereign's favourite; one whose great torch of genius and learning was lighted, as it was understood,—lighted and fed, to light them to their desires. Elizabeth herself, unwilling as she was to add any thing to the powers with which nature had crowned this man, instructed by her instinct, that 'such men were dangerous,' was willing, notwithstanding, to employ his peculiar gifts in services of this nature; and so was her successor. And the historical fact is, that an extraordinary amount of business of one kind and another, passed in consequence through this gentleman's hands in both these reigns, and perhaps no one was ever better qualified by constitutional endowments, and by a predominant tendency to what he calls technically 'active good,' for the dispatch of business in which large and distant results were comprehended. And if in managing plots for these illustrious personages, he conducted them always with stedfast reference to his ulterior aims,—if, in writing letters for them, he wrote them always with the under-tones of his own part,—of his own immortal part that was to survive 'when tyrants' crests and tombs of brass were spent' running through them—if, in composing state papers and concocting legal advice, and legal decisions, he contrived to insert in them an inner meaning, and to point to the secret history which contained their solution, who that knows what those times were, who that knows to what divine ends this man's life was dedicated, shall undertake to blame him for it.

All these papers were written with an eye to publication; thay were written for the future, but they were written in that same secret method, in that same 'cipher' which he has to stop to describe before he can introduce the subject of 'the principal and supreme sciences,' with the distinct assurance that as 'matters stand then, it is an art of great use,' though some may think he introduces it with its kindred arts, in that place, for the sake of making out a muster-roll of the sciences, and to little other purpose, and that trivial as these may seem in such a connexion, 'to those who have spent their labours and studies in them, they seem great matters,' appealing to 'those who are skilful in them' to say whether he has not given, in what he has said of them, 'though in few words,' a proof of his proficiency. This was the method of writing in which not the principal and supreme sciences only, but every thing that was fit to be written at all had need to be written then.

'Ciphers are commonly in letters, but may be in words.' Both these kinds of ciphers were employed in the writings of this school. The reading of that which is 'in letters,' the one in which letters are secretly employed as 'symbols' of esoteric philosophic subtleties, is reserved for those who have found their way into the esoteric chambers of this learning. It is reserved for those who have read the 'Book of Sports and Riddles,' which this school published, and who happen to have it with them when it happens to be called for; it is reserved for those who have circumvented Hamlet, and tracked him to his last lurking place, and plucked out the heart of his mystery; for those who have been in Prospero's Island, and 'untied his spell.' This point gained,—the secret of the cipher 'in letters,'—the secret of 'the symbols,' and other 'devices' and 'conceits' which were employed in this school as a medium of secret philosophic correspondence, the characters in which these men struck through the works they could not own then, the grand colossal symbol of the school, its symbol of universality, large as the world, enduring as the ages of the human kind, and with it—in it, their own particular 'marks' and private signatures,—this mastered,—with the secret of this in our hands, the cipher 'in words' presents no difficulties, When we come to read the philosophical papers of this great firm in letters, with the aid of that discovery, we shall know what one of the partners of it means, when he says, that on 'account of the rawness and unskilfulness of the hands through which they pass, the greatest matters are sometimes carried in the weakest ciphers.'

It was easy, for instance, in defining the position of the favourite in the Court of Queen Elizabeth, in recommending a civil rather than a military greatness as the one least likely to provoke the animosity and suspicion of government under those conditions, in recommending that so far from taking umbrage at the advancement of a rival—the policy of the position prescribed, the deliberate putting forward and sustaining of another favourite to avert the jealousy and fatal suspicion with which, under such conditions, the government regards its favourite, when popularity and the qualities of a military chieftain are combined in him; it was easy in marking out those grand points in the conditions of the chief courtiers' policy at that time, to glance at the position of other men in that same court, seeking for power under those same conditions—men whose position, inasmuch as the immediate welfare of society and the destinies of mankind in future ages were concerned in it, was infinitely more important than that of the person whose affairs were agitated on the surface of the letter.

It was easy, too, in setting forth the conflicting claims of the 'New Company and the Old' to the monopoly of the manufacture and dying of woollens, for instance, to glance at the New Company and the Old whose claims to the monopoly of another public interest, not less important, were coming forward for adjustment just about that time, and urging their respective rights upon the attention of the chief men in the nation.

Or in the discussion of a plan for reforming the king's household, and for reducing its wanton waste and extravagance—in exhibiting the detail of a plan for relieving the embarrassments of the palace just then, which, with the aid of the favourite and his friends, and their measures for relief, were fast urging on the revolution—it was easy to indicate a more extensive reform; it was impossible to avoid a glance, in passing, at the pitifulness of the position of the man who held all men in awe and bondage then; it was impossible to avoid a touch of that same pen which writes elsewhere, 'Beggar and Madman,' too, so freely,—consoling the Monarch with the suggestion that Essex was also greatly in debt at a time when he was much sought after and caressed, and instancing the case of other courtiers who had been in the same position, and yet contrived to hold their heads up.

Under the easy artistic disguise of courtly rivalries and opposing ambitions—under cover, it might be, of an outrageous personal mutual hostility—it was easy for public men belonging to the same side in politics, who were obliged to conduct, not only the business of the state, but their own private affairs, and to protect their own most sacred interests under such conditions,—it was easy for politicians trained in such a school, by the skilful use of such artifices, to play into each other's hands, and to attain ends which in open league they would have been sure to lose; to avert evils, it might be, which it would have been vain and fatal for those most concerned in them openly to resist. To give to a courtier seeking advancement, with certain ulterior aims always in view, the character of a speculator, a scholastic dreamer, unable for practice, unfit to be trusted with state affairs, was not, after all, however pointedly it might be complained of at the time, so fatal a blow as it would have been to direct attention, already sufficiently on the alert, to the remarkable practical gifts with which this same speculator happened, as we all know, to be also endowed. This courtier's chief enemy, if he had been in his great rival's secrets, or if he had reflected at all, might have done him a worse turn than that. The hostilities of that time are no more to be taken on trust than its friendships, and the exaggerated expressions of them,—the over-doing sometimes points to another meaning.

While indicating the legal method of proceeding in conducting the show of a trial, to which 'the man whose fame did indeed fold in the orb o' the world' was to be subjected—a trial in which the decision was known beforehand—'though,' says our Poet—

'Though well, we may not pass upon his life,
Without the form of justice;'—

it was easy for the mean, sycophantic, truckling tool of a Stuart—for the tool of a Stuart's favourite—to insert in such a paper, if not private articles, private readings of passages, interlinings, pointing to a history in that case which has not yet transpired; it was easy for such a one to do it, when the partner of his treasons would have had no chance to criticise his case, or meddle with it.

In this collection of the apparently miscellaneous remains of our great philosopher, there are included many important state papers, and much authentic correspondence with the chief personages and actors of that age, which performed their part at the time as letters and state papers, though they were every one of them written with an inner reference to the position of the writer, and intended to be unfolded eventually with the key of that position. But along with this authentic historical matter, cunningly intermingled with it, much that is 'supposititious,' to borrow a term which this writer found particularly to his purpose—supposititious in the same sense in which the speeches of Thucydides and those of his imitators are suppositious—is also introduced. There is a great deal of fictitious correspondence here, designed to eke out that view of this author's life and times which the authentic letters left unfinished, and which he was anxious, for certain reasons, to transmit to posterity,—which he was forbidden to transmit in a more direct manner. There is a good deal of miscellaneous letter-writing here, and there will be found whole series of letters, in which the correspondence is sustained on both sides in a tolerably lively manner, by this Master of Arts; but under a very meagre dramatic cover in this case, designedly thin, never meant to serve as a cover with 'men of understanding.' Read which side of the correspondence you will in these cases, 'here is his dry hand up and down.'

These fictitious supposititious letters are written in his own name, as often as in another's; for of all the impersonations, ancient and modern, historical and poetic, which the impersonated genius of the modern arts had to borrow to speak and act his part in, there is no such mask, no so deep, thick-woven, impenetrable disguise, as that historical figure to which his own name and person is attached;—the man whom the Tudor and the Stuart admitted to their secrets,—the man whom the Tudor tolerated, whom the Stuart delighted to honor. In his rules of policy, he has left us the most careful directions for the interpretations of the lives of men whose 'impediments' are such, and whose 'natures and ends' are so 'differing and dissonant from the general state of the times in which they live,' that it is necessary for them to avoid 'disclosing themselves,' 'to be in the whole course of their lives close, retired, reserved, as we see in Tiberius, who was never seen at a play,' men who are compelled, as it were, 'to act their lives as in a theatre.' 'The soundest disclosing,' he says, 'and expounding of MEN is by their NATURES and ENDS. The weaker sort of men are best interpreted by their natures, the wisest by their ends.' 'Princes are best interpreted by their natures, private persons by their ends, because princes being at the top of human desires, they have, for the most part, no particular ends whereto they aspire, by distance from which a man might take measure and scale of the rest of their actions and desires' 'Distance from which,'—that is the key for the interpretation of the lives of private persons of certain unusual endowments, who propound to themselves under such conditions 'good and reasonable ends, and such as are within their power to attain.' As to the worthiness of these ends, we have some acquaintance with them already in our own experience. The great leaders of the new movements which make the modern ages—the discoverers of its science of sciences, the inventors of its art of arts, found themselves in an enemy's camp, and the policy of war was the only means by which they could preserve and transmit to us the benefits we have already received at their hands,—the benefits we have yet to receive from them. The story of this Interpreter is sent down to us, not by accident, but by his own design. But it is sent down to us with the works in which the nobility of his nature is all laid open,—in which the end of his ends is constantly declared, and constantly pursued,—it is sent down to us along with the works in which his ends are accomplished, to the times that have found in their experience what they were. He did not think it too much to ask of ages experimentally acquainted with the virtue of the aims for which he made these sacrifices,—aims which he constantly propounded as the end of his large activity, to note the 'dissonance' between that life which the surface of these documents exhibits,—between that historic form, too, which the surface of that time's history exhibits,—and the nature which is revealed in this life-act,—the soul, the never-shaken soul of this proceeding.

'The god of soldiers,
With the consent of supreme Jove, inform
Thy thoughts with nobleness; that thou may'st prove
The shame UNVULNERABLE, and stick i' the war
Like a great sea-mark, standing every flaw,
And saving those that eye thee.'

'I would not, as I often hear dead men spoken of, that men should say of me, he judged, and lived so and so; I knew him better than any. Now, as much as decency permits, I here discover my inclinations and affections. If any observe, he will find that I have either told, or designed to tell all. What I cannot speak, I point out with my finger.' 'There was never greater circumspection and military prudence than is sometimes seen among us' ['Naturalists']. 'Can it be that men are afraid to lose themselves by the way, that they reserve themselves to the end of the game?'

'I mortally hate to be mistaken by those who happen to come across my name. He that does all things for honor and glory, what can he think to gain by showing himself to the world in a mask, and by concealing his true being from the people? If you are a coward, and men commend you for your valour, is it of you that they speak? They take you for another. Archelaus, king of Macedon, walking along the street, somebody threw water on his head, which they who were with him said he ought to punish: "Ay, but," said the other, "he did not throw the water upon me, but upon him whom he took me to be." Socrates being told by the people, that people spoke ill of him, "Not at all," said he; "there is nothing in me of what they say. I am content to be less commended, provided I am better known. I may be reputed a wise man, in such a sort of wisdom as I take to be folly."'—['The French Interpreter.']

This is the man who never in all his life came into the theatre, content to work behind the scenes, scientifically enlightened as to the true ends of living, and the means of attaining those ends, propounding deliberately his duty as a man, his duty to his kind, his obedience to the law of his higher nature, as his predominant end,—but not to the harm or oppression of his particular and private nature, but to its most felicitous conservation and advancement,—at large in its new Epicurean emancipations, rejoicing in its great fruition, happy in its untiring activities, triumphing over all impediments, celebrating in secret lyrics, its immortal triumphs over 'death and all oblivious enmity,' and finding, 'in the consciousness of good intentions, a more continual joy to nature than all the provision that can be made for security and repose,'—not reconciled to the part he was compelled to play in his own time,—his fine, keen sensibilities perpetually at war with it,—always balancing and reviewing the nice ethical questions it involved, and seeking always the 'nobler' solution. 'The one part have I suffered, the other will I do,'—demonstrating the possibility of making, even under such conditions, a 'life sublime.'

'All places that the eye of heaven visits
Are, to a wise man, ports and happy havens.'

There is no room here for details; but this is the account of this so irreconcileable difference between the Man of these Works and the Man in the Mask, in which he triumphantly achieved them;—this is the account, in the general, which will be found to be, upon investigation, the true one. And the more the subject is studied, even by the light which this work brings to bear upon it, the more the truth of this statement will become apparent.

But though the details are, by the limits of this volume, excluded here, it cannot well close, without one word as to the points in this part of the evidence, which have made the deepest impression on us.

No man suffered death, or mutilation, or torture, or outrage of any kind, under the two tyrannies of this age of learning, that it was possible for this scientific propounder of the law of human kind-ness to avert and protect him from—this anticipator and propounder of a human civilization. He was far in advance of our times in his criticism of the barbarisms which the rudest ages of social experiment have transmitted to us. He could not tread upon a beetle, without feeling through all that exquisite organization which was great nature's gift to her Interpreter in chief, great nature's pang. To anticipate the sovereign's wishes, seeking to divert them first 'with a merry conceit' perhaps; for, so light as that were, the motives on which such consequences might depend then—to forestall the inevitable decision was to arm himself with the powers he needed. The men who were protected and relieved by that secret combination against tyranny, which required, as the first condition of its existence, that its chiefs should occupy places of trust and authority, ought to come out of their graves to testify against the calumnies that blast our modern learning, and the virtue—the virtue of it, at its source. Does any one think that a universal slavery could be fastened on the inhabitants of this island, when wit and manliness are at their height here, without so much as the project of an 'underground railway' being suggested for the relief of its victims? 'I will seek him and privily relieve him. Go you and maintain talk with the Duke that my charity be not of him perceived. If he ask for me, I am ill and gone to bed. Go to; say you nothing. There is division between the Dukes—[between the Dukes]—and a worse matter than that. I have received a letter this night. It is dangerous to be spoken. I have locked the letter in my closet. There is part of a power already FOOTED. We must incline to THE KING. If I die for it, as no less is threatened me, the king, my old master, must be relieved.' That when all is done will be found to contain some hints as to the manner in which 'charities' of this kind have need to be managed, under a government armed with powers so indefinable.

Cassius. And let us awear our resolution.

Brutus. No, not an oath: If not the face of men,
The sufferance of our souls, THE TIMES ABUSE,—
If these be motives weak, break off betimes,
And every man hence to his idle bed;
So let high-sighted tyranny range on,
Till each man drop by lottery. But if THESE,—
As I am sure they do,—bear fire enough
To kindle cowards, and to steel with valour
The melting spirits of women, then, countrymen,
What need we any spur but OUR OWN CAUSE
To prick us to redress? what other bond
Than secret Romans, that have spoken the word,
And will not falter….
Swear priests and cowards, and men cautelous,
Old feeble carrions, and such suffering souls
That welcome wrongs; unto bad causes swear
Such creatures as men doubt; but do not stain
The even virtue of our enterprise,
Nor the insuppressive mettle of our spirits,
To think that, or our cause, or our performance,
Did need an oath.'

[Doctrine of the 'secret Romans.']

As to the rest, it was this man—this man of a scientific 'prudence' with the abhorrence of change, which is the instinct of the larger whole, confirmed by a scientific forethought—it was this man who gave at last the signal for change; not for war. 'Proceed by process' was his word. Constitutional remedies for the evils which appeared to have attained at last the unendurable point, were the remedies which he proposed—this was the move which he was willing, for his part, to initiate.—'We are not, perhaps, at the last gasp. I think I see ways to save us.'—The proceedings of the Parliament which condemned him were studiously arranged beforehand by himself,—he wrote the programme of it, and the part he undertook to perform in it was the greatest in history. [''Tis the indiligent reader that loses my subject, not I,' says the 'foreign interpreter' of this style of writing. 'There will always be found some word or other, in a corner, though it lie very close.' That is the rule for the reading of the evidence in this case. The word is there, though it lies very close, as it had need to, to be available.]

It was as a baffled, disgraced statesman, that he found leisure to complete and put in final order for posterity, those noble works, through which we have already learned to love and honour him, in the face of this calumny. It was as a disgraced and baffled statesman and courtier—all lurking jealousies and suspicions at last put to rest—all possibility of a political future precluded; but as a courtier still hanging on the king and on the power that controlled the king, for life and liberty; and careful still not to assert any independence of those same ends, which had always been taken to be his ends; it was in this character that he brought out at last the Novum Organum; it was in this character that he ventured to collect and republish his avowed philosophical works; it was in this character too that he ventured at last to produce that little piece of history which comes down to us loosely appended to these philosophical writings. A history of the Second Conquest of the Children of Alfred, a Conquest which they resisted, in heroic wars, but vainly, for want of leaders and organization—overborne by the genius of a military chief whom this historian compares in king-craft with his contemporaries Ferdinand of Spain, and Louis XI. It is a history which was dedicated to Charles I., which was corrected in the manuscript by James I., at the request of the author; and he owed to that monarch's approval of it, permission to come to town for the purpose of superintending its publication. It is the History of the Founding of the Tudor Dynasty: prepared,—as were the rest of these works,—under the patronage of an insolent favourite with whom it was necessary 'entirely to drop the character that carried with it the least show of truth or gracefulness,' and under the patronage of a monarch with whom it was not sufficient 'for persons of superior gifts and endowments to act the deformity of obsequiousness, unless they really changed themselves and became abject and contemptible in their persons.'

'I am in this (Volumnia)
Your wife, your son, these senators, the nobles,
And you will rather show our general lowts,
How you can frown, than spend a fawn upon them,
For the inheritance of their loves, and safeguard,
Of what that want might ruin.

Away my disposition!

When you do find him, or alive or dead,
He will be found like Brutus, LIKE HIMSELF.

'Yet country-men, O yet, hold up your heads.
I will proclaim my name about the field.
I am the son of Marcus Cato, HO!
A foe TO TYRANTS, and my country's friend.

'And I am Brutus, Marcus Brutus I,
Brutus, MY COUNTRY'S FRIEND, know ME for BRUTUS.'

FINIS.