handed down to the present time, even through the scholarly

Richard III. is said to have been deformed, one of his shoulders being somewhat higher than the other. The defect, however, was scarcely noticeable, and yet Shake-speare, following and enlarging upon Holinshed, tells us it was so marked that dogs in the street barked at the figure as it passed. But this exaggeration had a definite purpose. The play was written to show the natural connection between deformity in body and deformity in mind, the two being in the relation, as Bacon says, of cause and effect. Accordingly we have in Richard a monster "born before his time," " born with teeth," "unfinished," a "bottled spider," a "foul bunchback'd toad." He is also (in strict accordance with Bacon's theory), "void of natural affection;" for he murders his wife, his brother Clarence, and his two young nephews in the Tower; and he died with his mother's curse on his soul.1

In the play of 'Henry VI.,' this relationship between mind and body in the case of Richard III. is still more clearly expressed:

"Gloucester. Since the heavens have shaped my body so,

Let hell make crook'd my mind to answer it.

8 Henry VI., v. 6.

1 "The deformity could scarcely have been very marked in one who performed such feats upon the battlefield, nor does it appear distinctly in any contemporary portrait, though there are not a few. Of these several are of the same type, and perhaps by the same artist, as those in the royal collection at Windsor and the National Portrait Gallery. They exhibit an anxiouslooking face, with features capable, no doubt, of very varied expression, but scarcely the look of transparent malice and deceit attributed to him by Polydore Vergil, or the warlike, hard-favored visage with which he is credited by Sir Thomas More."-Dictionary of National Biography."

The same criticism applies to Holinshed. Authorities differ even as to which shoulder was the higher.

But in his motion like an angel strangeness and darkness of this sings, tabernacle of the body are seStill quiring to the young-eyed questered) again revived."

Cherubins;

Such harmony is in immortal

souls;

But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay

Doth grossly close it in, we can

not hear it."

Ad

vancement of Learning (1603-5).

"The pipe of seven reeds [borne by Pan] plainly denotes the harmony and consent of things, caused by the motion of the seven planets. . . If there be any lesser planets which are not visible, or any

Merchant of Venice, v. 1 (1600). greater change in the heavens (as

in some superlunary comets), it seems they are as pipes either entirely mute or vocal only for a season; inasmuch as their influences either do not approach so low as ourselves, or do not long interrupt the harmony of the seven pipes of Pan."- De Augmentis (1622).

It is the integument of our bodies, Shakespeare says in effect, that prevents our perceiving the harmonious motions of the stars; it is also the integument of our bodies, says Bacon, that shuts out from our memory those motions of the spirit which we had in a previous state of existence. Bacon deliberately used here the word motion to describe what it is that the body excludes; but editors of his works, even including Mr. Spedding, have ignorantly substituted for it the word notion. The parallel passage in the play justifies us in

restoring the original text. In Bacon's philosophy discord and concord are natural results of motion.

Indeed, both authors make occasional use of the word motion in a very peculiar philosophical sense, applying it, as occasion may require and to the despair of commentators, to every possible impulse or movement, mental and physical, in the whole realm of created things.

In Bacon:

"The light of nature consisteth in the motions [that is, intuitions] of the mind and the reports of the senses.' - Advancement of Learning.

Motions changed to notions by modern editors.

In Shake-speare:

"Yet in the number I do know but one

That, unassailable, holds on his rank,
Unshak'd of motion."

Julius Cæsar, iii. 1.

"Read, Unshak'd of notion.". UPTON's Critical Observations on Shakespeare, p. 229.

"The reasons of our state I cannot yield,

But like a common and an outward man,
That the great figure of a council frames
By self-unable motion."

All's Well, iii. 1.

"Read notion; that is, from his own ideas. A printer might easily mistake motion for notion."- Prebendary Upton, p. 230.

Puck is one of the aërial spirits personified in 'MidsummerNight's Dream.' He represents the winds.

Diomedes, having wounded Venus in battle, was put to death for impiety, and his followers were changed into swans, "a bird," says Bacon, "which at the approach of