DIVINATION INDUCED BY FASTING AND PRAYER "Soothsayer. Last night the very gods show'd me a vision, (I fast and pray'd for their intelli gence), thus: I saw Jove's bird, the Roman eagle, wing'd From the spongy south to this part of the west, There vanish'd in the sunbeams; "Natural divination springs from the inward power of the mind. It is of two sorts: the one, primitive; the other, by influxion. Primitive is grounded upon the supposition that the mind, when it is withdrawn and collected into itself, and not diffused into the organs of the body, has of its own essential power some pre-notion of things to come. This state of mind is commonly induced by those abstinences and observances which most withdraw the mind from exercising the duties of the body, so that it may enjoy its own nature, free from external restraint. The retiring of the mind within itself gives it the fuller benefit of its Own nature and makes it the more susceptible of divine influxions." De Augmentis (1622). Bacon says that the act of divination must be preceded by "abstinences and observances" that withdraw the mind from external objects; Shake-speare gives an instance in which the mind was prepared for an act of divination by "fasting and prayer." Each author claims in the same tone of self-confidence to have erected with his pen a monument that would endure forever. 360 PRINCE'S FAVORITES, SCREENS "His ambition growing . . . To have no screen between this part he play'd And him he play'd it for." Tempest, i. 2 (1623). "There is great use in ambitious men in being screens to princes in matters of danger and envy." Essay of Ambition (1625). Bacon defined the nature of the "screen in his letter of advice to Villiers, thus: "The king himself is above the reach of his people, but cannot be above their censures; and you are his shadow, if either he commit an error and is loath to avow it, but excuses it upon his ministers, of which you are the first in the eye; or you commit the fault, or have willingly permitted it, and must suffer for it; so perhaps you may be offered as a sacrifice to appease the multitude." 361 SEX IN PLANTS "Pale primroses, That die unmarried, ere they can Winter's Tale, iv. 4 (1623). (1616). "I am apt enough to think that this same binarium of a stronger and a weaker, like unto masculine and feminine, doth hold in all living bodies."— Natural History (1622-25). The existence of sex in plants was known, it appears, to the author of the Winter's Tale,' as well as to Bacon. Cæsalpinus' great work on the subject was published in Italy in 1583, but not translated into English in Shake-speare's time. We owe this striking parallelism to Mr. Edmund Bengough. In the passage from Shakespeare, the King of France is called a "broker," because he espouses the righteous cause of Prince Arthur, not because it is righteous, but that he may thereby "woo and win" favor. In the passage from Bacon, the King of England is also called a broker, because he passes wholesome laws, not because they are wholesome, but that he may thus "woo and win" popular applause. We have the same hypocritical pretence, described in the same terms, in both cases. |