Further on he speaks of Bacon ‘keeping the Muse’s company for sport twixt grave affairs’—an apology for Bacon’s amateur verses.”
Now, first of all be it observed that the italics and the note of admiration in the above quotations are Mr. Dowse’s own contribution.[101] And what is the suggestion, again to put it into plain English? It is that Davies, though in his heart regarding Bacon with contempt and abhorrence, had accepted a large sum of money from him, and therefore felt compelled, however reluctantly, to write a poem in his honour! Observe that Mr. Dowse in other places speaks of Davies in the highest terms, and cites him as a witness of unimpeachable honesty and honour in favour of Shakspere, player and author. Yet he allows his bitter feelings against Bacon to carry him so far that rather than recognise what must be plain to every impartial reader, viz., that Davies was writing ex animo as a friend and admirer of Bacon, he would have us believe, in vilification of his own witness, that the poet was induced by filthy lucre to write entirely insincere, and, therefore, particularly nauseous flattery of a man whom he hated and despised!
And now I will set before the reader the sonnet in extenso (preserving the italics as in the original), and ask him whether there is any possible reason to suppose that it is not an honest expression of the writer’s genuine admiration for Bacon:
To the royall, ingenious, and all learned Knight, Sir Francis Bacon.
Thy bounty and the Beauty of thy Witt
Comprisd in Lists of Law and learned Arts,
Each making thee for great Imployment fitt
Which now thou hast (though short of thy deserts)
Compells my pen to let fall shining Inke
And to bedew the Baies that deck thy Front;
And to thy health in Helicon to drinke
As to her Bellamour the Muse is wont:
For, thou dost her embozom; and dost use
Her company for sport twixt grave affaires:
So utterst Law the livelyer through thy Muse.
And for that all thy Notes are sweetest Aires;
My Muse thus notes thy worth in ev’ry Line,
With yncke which thus she sugers; so to shine.
Now this “sugred sonnet” is I think a very remarkable one. Considering the inflated style in use for laudatory poems of the time, it is written in singularly moderate language, and I think no reader, after considering it as a whole, could possibly put upon it the malignant construction suggested by Mr. Dowse, unless his judgment be warped by very bitter prejudice. But it is not only an honest eulogy of Bacon as a man, it is valuable as bearing witness to the fact, doubtless well known to Davies, that Bacon was a poet. Mr. Dowse speaks contemptuously of Davies’s “apology for Bacon’s amateur verses,” but I fear Mr. Dowse’s sight is distorted by a fragment of that broken magic mirror whereof Hans Anderson has written so charmingly. Davies drinks to Bacon’s health in “Helicon”—not in “the waters of the Spaw,” but in “the waters of Parnassus,”
As to her Bellamour the Muse is wont.
It is true that Bacon was engaged in “grave affaires”—he had been made Solicitor-General in 1607—and therefore, though he wooed the Muse, could only “use her company” by way of recreation in intervals of more serious employment. Nevertheless he is fully recognised as her “Bellamour.”
We may be grateful to Mr. Dowse for once more calling attention to this very high and remarkable tribute of praise.
Mr. Dowse goes on to cite Davies’s testimony—which is here, of course, to be taken very seriously indeed—to the excellence of William Shakspere. “In his ‘Microcosmos,’ in a stanza beginning ‘Players, I love,’ Davies singles out Shakespeare and Burbage for his highest admiration. He attributes to them ‘wit (i.e. intellect), courage, good shape, good partes, and ALL GOOD!’”