Both authors based the allegiance of subjects to hereditary monarchs on the same ground on which obedience of children is due to parents; namely, not by human laws, but by a rule of nature. And both illustrated it by the example of bees in a hive. Bacon believed in the divine right of kings; so did Shake-speare. This parallelism and the three parallelisms that follow were pointed out by Mr. Wigston. IN SOLITUDE, "Alcibiades. What art thou, there? Timon. A beast, as thou art." Ibid., iv. 3. "Nothing I'll bear from thee But nakedness, thou detestable town! Timon will to the woods, where he shall find The unkindest beast more kinder than mankind." 442 MAN IS A BEAST "Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast, or a god.' For it is most true that a natural and secret hatred and aversation towards society, in any man, hath somewhat of the savage beast." Ibid. Ibid., iv. 1. The dramatist had so strong a feeling that a man who, out of hatred towards his fellow-men, retires to a solitude, must have in him "something of the savage beast," that he makes one of his characters on seeing Timon's tomb exclaim, "What is this! Some beast rear'd this!"-v. 3. FOLLOWERS STRIPPING A MAN OF WINGS When every feather sticks in his Lord Timon will be left a naked gull." Timon of Athens, ii. 1 (1623). 445 "Costly followers are not to be liked, lest, while a man maketh his train longer, he make his wings shorter."-Essay of Followers and Friends (1598). AIR POISONED BY FOUL BREATHS "The rabblement shouted and clapped their chopped hands, and threw up their sweaty night-caps, and uttered such a deal of stinking breath, because Cæsar refused the crown, that it had almost choked Cæsar; for he swooned and fell down at it. And for my part, I durst not laugh, for fear of opening my lips and receiving the bad air." - Julius Cæsar, i. 2 (1623). "If such foul smells be made by art and by the hand, they consist chiefly of man's flesh or sweat putrefied; for they are not those stinks which the nostrils straight abhor and expel, that are most pernicious. And these empoisonments of air are the more dangerous in meetings of people, because the much breath of people doth further the reception of the infection." - Natural History (1622–25). 446 STARS ARE FIRES "The skies are painted with un number'd sparks; They are all fire." Julius Cæsar, iii. 1 (1623). "The stars are true fires.". Descriptio Globi Intellectualis (c. 1612). 447 GOLD, THE METAL MOST EASILY WROUGHT "Cassius [speaking to Brutus]. I see Thy honorable metal may be wrought From that it is disposed." Julius Caesar, i. 2 (1623). From Bacon "The most excellent metal, gold, is of all other the most pliant and most enduring to be wrought; so of all living and breathing substances the perfectest (man) is the most susceptible."- Helps for the Intellectual Powers (1596-1604). Dixon's 'Francis Bacon and his Shakespeare,' p. 173. "To speak truth of Cæsar, I have not known when his affec tions sway'd More than his reason." - "Affections behold merely the present; reason the future. Therefore, the present filling the imagination more, reason is commonly Julius Cæsar, ii. 1 (1623). vanquished; but after that force of eloquence and persuasion have made things future and remote appear as present, then upon the The author of the play had investigated the relative strength of the affections and the reasoning faculty. Bacon called his philosophical method a ladder (Scala Intellectus), and declared that every sincere inquirer after truth must mount it, round by round, to the top and rest there. In no other way, as he taught, can one safely climb to a broad generalization. If, however, the searcher after truth should leap higher, or "unto the ladder turn his back," he will become "weary of experiment;" in other words, (Shake-speare's), he will 66 scorn the base degrees By which he did ascend." This leads to error. Brutus (or the author who created the character of Brutus) certainly understood the difference between 'Anticipation of Mind' and 'Interpretation of Nature,' as laid down in the Novum Organum. |