A Century of Science, and Other Essays

by John Fiske

The Wolfian theory may now be regarded as a thing of the past; it has had its day and been flung aside. If Wolf himself were living, he would be the first to laugh at it. Its original prop has been knocked away, since it has become pretty clear that the art of writing was practised about the shores of the Ægean Sea long before 1100 b. c. Even Wolf would now admit that it might have been a real letter that Bellerophon carried to the father of Anteia.[37] All attempts to show a lack of unity in the design of the Iliad and the Odyssey have failed irretrievably, and the discussion has served only to make more and more unmistakable the work of the mighty master. The ballad theory is dead and buried, and he who would read its obituary may find keen pleasure, as well as many a wholesome lesson in sound criticism, in the sensible and brilliant book by Andrew Lang on "Homer and the Epic."

The Bacon-Shakespeare folly has never been set forth by scholars of commanding authority, like Wolf and Lachmann, or Niese and Wilamowitz Moellendorff. Among Delia Bacon's followers not one can by any permissible laxity of speech be termed a scholar, and their theory has found acceptance with very few persons. Nevertheless, it illustrates as well as the Wolfian theory the way in which such notions grow. It starts from a false premise, hazily conceived, and it subsists upon arguments in which trivial facts are assigned higher value than facts of vital importance. Mr. Lang's remark upon certain learned Homeric commentators, "that they pore over the hyssop on the wall, but are blind to the cedar of Lebanon," applies with tenfold force to the Bacon-Shakespeare sciolists. In them we always miss the just sense of proportion which is one of the abiding marks of sanity. The unfortunate lady who first brought their theory into public notoriety in 1857 was then sinking under the cerebral disease of which she died two years later, and her imitators have been chiefly weak minds of the sort that thrive upon paradox, closely akin to the circle-squarers and inventors of perpetual motion. Underlying all the absurdities, however, there is something that deserves attention. Like many other morbid phenomena, the Bacon-Shakespeare folly has its natural history which is instructive. The vagaries of Delia Bacon and her followers originated in a group of conditions which admit of being specified and described, and which the historian of nineteenth-century literature will need to notice. In order to understand the natural history of the affair, it is necessary to examine the Delia Bacon theory at greater length than it would otherwise deserve. Let us see how it is constructed.

It starts with a syllogism, of which the major premise is that the dramas ascribed to Shakespeare during his lifetime, and ever since believed to be his, abound in evidences of extraordinary book-learning. The minor premise is that William Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon could not have acquired or possessed so much book-learning. The conclusion is that he could not have written those plays.

The question then arises, Which of Shakespeare's contemporaries had enough book-lore to have written them? No doubt Francis Bacon had enough. The conclusion does not follow, however, that he wrote the plays; for there were other contemporaries with learning enough and to spare, as for example George Chapman and Ben Jonson. These two men, to judge from their acknowledged works, were great poets, whereas in Bacon's fifteen volumes there is not a paragraph which betrays poetical genius. Why not, then, ascribe the Shakespeare dramas to Chapman or Jonson? Here the Baconizers endeavour to support their assumption by calling attention to similarities in thought and phrase between Francis Bacon and the writer of the dramas. Up to this point their argument consists of deductions from assumed premises; here they adduce inductive evidence, such as it is. We shall see specimens of it by and by. At present we are concerned with the initial syllogism.

And first, as to the major premise, it must be met with a flat denial. The Shakespeare plays do not abound with evidences of scholarship or learning of the sort that is gathered from profound and accurate study of books. It is precisely in this respect that they are conspicuously different from many of the plays contemporary with them, and from other masterpieces of English literature. Such plays as Jonson's "Sejanus" and "Catiline" are the work of a scholar deeply indoctrinated with the views and mental habits of classic antiquity; he has soaked himself in the style of Lucan and Seneca, until their mental peculiarities have become like a second nature to him, and are unconsciously betrayed alike in the general handling of his story and in little turns of expression. Or take Milton's "Lycidas:" no one but a man saturated in every fibre with Theocritus and Virgil could have written such a poem. An extremely foreign and artificial literary form has been so completely mastered and assimilated by Milton that he uses it with as much ease as Theocritus himself, and has produced a work that even the master of idyls had scarcely equalled. After the terrific invective against the clergy and the beautiful invocation to the flowers, followed by the triumphant hallelujah of Christian faith, observe the sudden reversion to pagan sentiment where Lycidas is addressed as the genius of the shore. Only profound scholarship could have written this wonderful poem,—could have brought forth the Christian thought as if spontaneously through the medium of the pagan form. Now there is nothing of this sort in Shakespeare. He uses classical materials, or anything else under the sun that suits his purpose. He takes a chronicle from Holinshed, a biography from North's translation of Plutarch, a legend from Saxo Grammaticus through Belleforest's French version, a novel of Boccaccio, a miracle play,—whatever strikes his fancy; he chops up his materials and weaves them into a story without much regard to classical models; defying rules of order and unity, and not always heeding probability, but never forgetful of his abiding purpose, to create live men and women. These people may have Greek or Latin names, and their scene of action may be Rome or Mitylene, decorated with scraps of classical knowledge such as a bright man might pick up in miscellaneous reading; but all this is the superficial setting, the mere frame to the picture. The living canvas is human nature as Shakespeare saw it in London and depicted with supreme poetic faculty. Among the new books within his reach was Chapman's magnificent translation of the Iliad, which at a later day inspired Keats to such a noble outburst of encomium; and in "Troilus and Cressida" we have the Greek and Trojan heroes set before us with an incisive reality not surpassed by Homer himself. This play shows how keenly Shakespeare appreciated Homer, how delicately and exquisitely he could supplement the picture; but there is nothing in its five acts that shows him clothed in the garment of ancient thought as Milton wore it. Shakespeare's freedom from such lore is a great advantage to him; in "Troilus and Cressida" there is a freedom of treatment hardly possible to a professional scholar. It is because of this freedom that Shakespeare reaches a far wider public of readers and listeners than Milton or Dante, whose vast learning makes them in many places "caviare to the general." Book-lore is a great source of power, but one may easily be hampered by it. What we forever love in Homer is the freshness that comes with lack of it, and in this sort of freshness Shakespeare agrees with Homer far more than with the learned poets.

It is not for a moment to be denied that Shakespeare's plays exhibit a remarkable wealth of varied knowledge. The writer was one of the keenest observers that ever lived. In the woodland or on the farm, in the printing shop or the alehouse, or up and down the street, not the smallest detail escaped him. Microscopic accuracy, curious interest in all things, unlimited power of assimilating knowledge, are everywhere shown in the plays. These are some of the marks of what we call genius,—something that we are far from comprehending, but which experience has shown that books and universities cannot impart. All the colleges on earth could not by combined effort make the kind of man we call a genius, but such a man may at any moment be born into the world, and it is as likely to be in a peasant's cottage as anywhere.

There is nothing in which men differ more widely than in the capacity for imbibing and assimilating knowledge. The capacity is often exercised unconsciously. When my eldest son, at the age of six, was taught to read in the course of a few weeks of daily instruction, it was suddenly discovered that his four-year-old brother also could read. Nobody could tell how it happened. Of course the younger boy must have taken keen notice of what the elder one was doing, but the process went on without attracting attention until the result appeared.

This capacity for unconscious learning is not at all uncommon. It is possessed to some extent by everybody; but a very high degree of it is one of the marks of genius. I remember one evening, many years ago, hearing Herbert Spencer in a friendly discussion regarding certain functions of the cerebellum. Abstruse points of comparative anatomy and questions of pathology were involved. Spencer's three antagonists were not violently opposed to him, but were in various degrees unready to adopt his views. The three were: Huxley, one of the greatest of comparative anatomists; Hughlings Jackson, a very eminent authority on the pathology of the nervous system; and George Henry Lewes, who, although more of an amateur in such matters, had nevertheless devoted years of study to neural physiology, and was thoroughly familiar with the history of the subject. Spencer more than held his ground against the others. He met fact with fact, brought up points in anatomy the significance of which Huxley confessed that he had overlooked, and had more experiments and clinical cases at his tongue's end than Jackson could muster. It was quite evident that he knew all they knew on the subject, and more besides. Yet Spencer had never been through a course of "regular training" in the studies concerned; nor had he ever studied at a university, or even at a high school. Where did he learn the wonderful mass of facts which he poured forth that evening? Whence came his tremendous grasp upon the principles involved? Probably he could not have told you. A few days afterward I happened to be talking with Spencer about history, a subject of which he modestly said he knew but little. I told him I had often been struck with the aptness of the historic illustrations cited in many chapters of his "Social Statics," written when he was twenty-nine years old. The references were not only always accurate, but they showed an intelligence and soundness of judgment unattainable, one would think, save by close familiarity with history. Spencer assured me that he had never read extensively in history. Whence, then, this wealth of knowledge,—not smattering, not sciolism, but solid, well-digested knowledge? Really, he did not know, except that when his interest was aroused in any subject he was keenly alive to all facts bearing upon it, and seemed to find them whichever way he turned. When I mentioned this to Lewes, while recalling the discussion on the cerebellum, he exclaimed: "Oh, you can't account for it! It's his genius. Spencer has greater instinctive power of observation and assimilation than any man since Shakespeare, and he is like Shakespeare for hitting the bull's-eye every time he fires. As for Darwin and Huxley, we can follow their intellectual processes, but Spencer is above and beyond all; he is inspired!"

Those were Lewes's exact words, and they made a deep impression upon me. The comparison with Shakespeare struck me as a happy one, and I can understand both Spencer and Shakespeare the better for it. Concerning Spencer one circumstance may be observed. Since his early manhood he has lived in London, and has had for his daily associates men of vast attainments in every department of science. He has thus had rare opportunities for absorbing an immense fund of knowledge unconsciously.

It is evident that the author of Shakespeare's plays possessed an extraordinary "instinctive power of observation and assimilation." There was nothing strange in such a genius growing up in a small Warwickshire town. The difficulty is one which the Delia-Baconians have created for themselves. As it is their chief stock in trade, they magnify it in every way they can think of. Shakespeare's parents, they say, were illiterate, and he did not know how to spell his own name. It appears as Shagspere, Shaxpur, Shaxberd, Chacsper, and so on through some thirty forms, several of which William Shakespeare himself used indifferently. The implication is that such a man must have been shockingly ignorant. The real ignorance, however, is on the part of those who use such an argument. Apparently, they do not know that in Shakespeare's time such laxity in spelling was common in all ranks of society and in all grades of culture. The name of Elizabeth's great Lord Treasurer, Cecil, and his title, Burghley, were both spelled in half a dozen ways. The name of Raleigh occurs in more than forty different forms, and Sir Walter, one of the most accomplished men of his time, wrote it Rauley, Rawleyghe, Ralegh, and in yet other ways. The talk of the Baconizers on this point is simply ludicrous.