[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.