From the lets
Of steep ambition, sleepy poverty,
Spirit-quenching sickness, dull captivity,
Distracting business, and from beauty’s nets,
And all that calls from this, and t’ others whets,
O let me not launch out, but let me save
Th’ expence of brain, and spirit, that my grave
His right and due, a whole unwasted man, may have.
And in Stanza XXI are the words quoted by Professor Dowden, concerning the sparrow:
Freely on his she friends
He blood, and spirit, pith and marrow spends.
This indeed proves, what nobody has ever denied, viz., that the expression “to spend the spirit” is not confined among writers of the Elizabethan age to Bacon and Shakespeare. To what extent it detracts from the force of the coincidence on which Judge Webb has laid stress, I must leave it to the reader to determine. The learned Judge laughs at the idea that citations from Bright’s Treatise of Melancholy and Donne’s Progress of the Soul, are proof that the expression was one in common use.
There is another example of agreement between Bacon and Shakespeare in connection with this theory of “spirits.” Jessica says (Merchant of Venice, V. 1):
I am never merry when I heare sweet music.
To which Lorenzo replies:
The reason is your spirits are attentive.
Bacon writes (Natural Hist. Cent. VIII, 745): “Some noises help sleep; as the blowing of the wind, the trickling of water, humming of bees, soft singing, reading, etc. The cause is for that they move in the spirits a gentle attention.”
Upon this Professor Dowden tells us that Bright talks of music “alluring the spirites,” while “Burton quotes from Lemnius, who declares that music not only affects the ears, ‘but the very arteries, the vital and animal spirits,’ and, again from Scaliger, who explains its power as due to the fact that it plays upon ‘the spirits about the heart,’ whereupon Burton, like Shakespeare’s Lorenzo, proceeds to speak of the influence of music upon beasts, and like Lorenzo, cites the tale of Orpheus.” But Burton’s Anatomy was not published till 1621, about five years after Shakspere’s death, and we can hardly suppose that the player delved into “Lemnius” or “Scaliger!” But we shall doubtless be told that, whether Shakspere had read these books or not, the fact that Bright speaks of music alluring the spirits shows that this was a common expression, and that Lorenzo’s words are to be referred to “the common knowledge or the common error of the time.” But Lorenzo says, “your spirits are attentive,” and Bacon speaks of “a gentle attention” of the spirits. I do not see this expression in Bright, or Lemnius, or Scaliger, as quoted by Professor Dowden. Here, then, we have two expressions, “the expense of spirits” in connection with Venus, and “the attention of spirits” in connection with music, both in Shakespeare and Bacon. It will be for every reader who is interested in the question, taking these coincidences with many others of a similar character, to decide whether “the common knowledge of the time” affords a sufficient explanation. And let him remember two things—first, that it is, of course, impossible to find an agreement between Shakespeare and Bacon on a subject of which they two alone (if two they were) had exclusive knowledge, and secondly that though one, or two, or three threads may not suffice to bear a weight, a great many threads combined into a cord may do so. At any rate, it may be said of these two: