Part 14 (1/2)
_Hooker._ Why, indeed, since your lords.h.i.+p interrogates me--I looked, idly and imprudently, into that rich buffet; and I saw, unless the haze of the weather has come into the parlour, or my sight is the worse for last night's reading, no fewer than six silver pints.
Surely, six tables for company are laid only at coronations.
_Bacon._ There are many men so squeamish that forsooth they would keep a cup to themselves, and never communicate it to their nearest and best friend; a fas.h.i.+on which seems to me offensive in an honest house, where no disease of ill repute ought to be feared. We have lately, Master Richard, adopted strange fas.h.i.+ons; we have run into the wildest luxuries. The Lord Leicester, I heard it from my father--G.o.d forfend it should ever be recorded in our history!--when he entertained Queen Elizabeth at Kenilworth Castle, laid before her Majesty a fork of pure silver. I the more easily credit it, as Master Thomas Coriatt doth vouch for having seen the same monstrous sign of voluptuousness at Venice. We are surely the especial favourites of Providence, when such wantonness hath not melted us quite away. After this portent, it would otherwise have appeared incredible that we should have broken the Spanish Armada.
Pledge me: hither comes our wine.
[_To the Servant._] Dolt! villain! is not this the beverage I reserve for myself?
The blockhead must imagine that Malmsey runs in a stream under the ocean, like the Alpheus. Bear with me, good Master Hooker, but verily I have little of this wine, and I keep it as a medicine for my many and growing infirmities. You are healthy at present: G.o.d in His infinite mercy long maintain you so! Weaker drink is more wholesome for you. The lighter ones of France are best accommodated by Nature to our const.i.tutions, and therefore she has placed them so within our reach that we have only to stretch out our necks, in a manner, and drink them from the vat. But this Malmsey, this Malmsey, flies from centre to circ.u.mference, and makes youthful blood boil.
_Hooker._ Of a truth, my knowledge in such matters is but spare. My Lord of Canterbury once ordered part of a goblet, containing some strong Spanish wine, to be taken to me from his table when I dined by sufferance with his chaplains, and, although a most discreet, prudent man as befitteth his high station, was not so chary of my health as your lords.h.i.+p. Wine is little to be trifled with, physic less. The Cretans, the brewers of this Malmsey, have many aromatic and powerful herbs among them. On their mountains, and notably on Ida, grows that dittany which works such marvels, and which perhaps may give activity to this hot medicinal drink of theirs. I would not touch it, knowingly: an unregarded leaf, dropped into it above the ordinary, might add such puissance to the concoction as almost to break the buckles in my shoes; since we have good and valid authority that the wounded hart, on eating thereof, casts the arrow out of his haunch or entrails, although it stuck a palm deep.[4]
_Bacon._ When I read of such things I doubt them. Religion and politics belong to G.o.d, and to G.o.d's vicegerent the king; we must not touch upon them unadvisedly: but if I could procure a plant of dittany on easy terms, I would persuade my apothecary and my gamekeeper to make some experiments.
_Hooker._ I dare not distrust what grave writers have declared in matters beyond my knowledge.
_Bacon._ Good Master Hooker, I have read many of your reasonings, and they are admirably well sustained: added to which, your genius has given such a strong current to your language as can come only from a mighty elevation and a most abundant plenteousness. Yet forgive me, in G.o.d's name, my worthy master, if you descried in me some expression of wonder at your simplicity. We are all weak and vulnerable somewhere: common men in the higher parts; heroes, as was feigned of Achilles, in the lower. You would define to a hair's-breadth the qualities, states, and dependencies of princ.i.p.alities, dominations, and powers; you would be unerring about the apostles and the churches; and 'tis marvellous how you wander about a pot-herb!
_Hooker._ I know my poor weak intellects, most n.o.ble lord, and how scantily they have profited by my hard painstaking. Comprehending few things, and those imperfectly, I say only what others have said before, wise men and holy; and if, by pa.s.sing through my heart into the wide world around me, it pleaseth G.o.d that this little treasure shall have lost nothing of its weight and pureness, my exultation is then the exultation of humility. Wisdom consisteth not in knowing many things, nor even in knowing them thoroughly; but in choosing and in following what conduces the most certainly to our lasting happiness and true glory. And this wisdom, my Lord of Verulam, cometh from above.
_Bacon._ I have observed among the well-informed and the ill-informed nearly the same quant.i.ty of infirmities and follies: those who are rather the wiser keep them separate, and those who are wisest of all keep them better out of sight. Now, examine the sayings and writings of the prime philosophers, and you will often find them, Master Richard, to be untruths made to resemble truths. The business with them is to approximate as nearly as possible, and not to touch it: the goal of the charioteer is _evitata fervidis rotis_, as some poet saith. But we who care nothing for chants and cadences, and have no time to catch at applauses, push forward over stones and sands straightway to our object. I have persuaded men, and shall persuade them for ages, that I possess a wide range of thought unexplored by others, and first thrown open by me, with many fair enclosures of choice and abstruse knowledge. I have incited and instructed them to examine all subjects of useful and rational inquiry; few that occurred to me have I myself left untouched or untried: one, however, hath almost escaped me, and surely one worth the trouble.
_Hooker._ Pray, my lord, if I am guilty of no indiscretion, what may it be?
_Bacon._ Francis Bacon.
FOOTNOTE:
[4] Lest it be thought that authority is wanting for the strong expression of Hooker on the effects of dittany, the reader is referred to the curious treatise of Plutarch on the reasoning faculty of animals, in which (near the end) he asks: 'Who instructed deer wounded by the Cretan arrow to seek for dittany? on the tasting of which herb the bolts fall immediately from their bodies.'
OLIVER CROMWELL AND WALTER n.o.bLE
_Cromwell._ What brings thee back from Staffords.h.i.+re, friend Walter?
_n.o.ble._ I hope, General Cromwell, to persuade you that the death of Charles will be considered by all Europe as a most atrocious action.
_Cromwell._ Thou hast already persuaded me: what then?
_n.o.ble._ Surely, then, you will prevent it, for your authority is great. Even those who upon their consciences found him guilty would remit the penalty of blood, some from policy, some from mercy. I have conversed with Hutchinson, with Ludlow,[5] your friend and mine, with Henry Nevile, and Walter Long: you will oblige these worthy friends, and unite in your favour the suffrages of the truest and trustiest men living. There are many others, with whom I am in no habits of intercourse, who are known to entertain the same sentiments; and these also are among the country gentlemen, to whom our parliament owes the better part of its reputation.
_Cromwell._ You country gentlemen bring with you into the People's House a freshness and sweet savour which our citizens lack mightily. I would fain merit your esteem, heedless of those pursy fellows from hulks and warehouses, with one ear lappeted by the pen behind it, and the other an heirloom, as Charles would have had it, in Laud's Star-chamber. Oh, they are proud and b.l.o.o.d.y men! My heart melts; but, alas! my authority is null: I am the servant of the Commonwealth. I will not, dare not, betray it. If Charles Stuart had threatened my death only, in the letter we ripped out of the saddle, I would have reproved him manfully and turned him adrift: but others are concerned; lives more precious than mine, worn as it is with fastings, prayers, long services, and preyed upon by a pouncing disease. The Lord hath led him into the toils laid for the innocent. Foolish man! he never could eschew evil counsel.
_n.o.ble._ In comparison with you, he is but as a pinnacle to a b.u.t.tress. I acknowledge his weaknesses, and cannot wink upon his crimes: but that which you visit as the heaviest of them perhaps was not so, although the most disastrous to both parties--the bearing of arms against his people. He fought for what he considered his hereditary property; we do the same: should we be hanged for losing a lawsuit?
_Cromwell._ No, unless it is the second. Thou talkest finely and foolishly, Wat, for a man of thy calm discernment. If a rogue holds a pistol to my breast, do I ask him who he is? Do I care whether his doublet be of cat-skin or of dog-skin? Fie upon such wicked sophisms!
Marvellous, how the devil works upon good men's minds!
_n.o.ble._ Charles was always more to be dreaded by his friends than by his enemies, and now by neither.