Part 32 (1/2)
The dispute which arose between Bacon as a lawyer and Edward c.o.ke deserves notice.
c.o.ke also has a place in literature. His reports are, even at the present day, known without his name simply as 'The Reports,' and his 'Inst.i.tutes' is one of the most learned works which this age produced.
It is rather a collection provided with notes, but is instructive and suggestive from the variety of and the contrast of its contents. c.o.ke traced the English laws to the remotest antiquity; he considered them as the common production of the wisest men of earlier ages, and at the same time as the great inheritance of the English people, and its best protection against every kind of tyranny, spiritual or temporal. Even the old Norman French, in which they were to a great extent composed, he would not part with, for a peculiar meaning attached itself, in his view, to every word.
On the other hand Bacon as Attorney-General formed the plan of comprising the common law in a code, by which a limit should be set to the caprice of the judges, and the private citizen be better a.s.sured of his rights. He thought of revising the Statute-Book, and wished to erase everything useless, to remove difficulties, and to bring what was contradictory into harmony.
Bacon's purpose coincided with the idea of a general system of legislation entertained by the King: he would have preferred the Roman law to the statute law of England. c.o.ke was a man devoted to the letter of the law, and was inclined to offer that resistance to the sovereign which was implied in a strict adherence to the law as it was. In the conflict that arose the judges, influenced by his example, appealed to the laws as they were laid down, according to the verbal meaning of which they thought themselves bound to decide. Bacon maintained that the Judges' oath was meant to include obedience to the King also, to whom application must be made in every matter affecting his prerogative. This is probably what Queen Elizabeth also thought, and it was the decided opinion of King James. He made the man who cherished similar views his Lord Chancellor, and dismissed c.o.ke from his service. Bacon when in office was responsible for a catastrophe which, as we shall see, not only ruined himself, but reacted upon the monarchy. The English, contemporaries and posterity alike, have taken the side of c.o.ke. Yet Bacon's industry in business is not therefore altogether to be despised. He urged the King, who was disposed to judge hastily, to take time and to weigh the reasons of both parties.
He gave the judges who went on circuit through the country the most pertinent advice. The directions which he drew up for the Court of Chancery have laid the foundations of the practice of that court, and are still an authority for it. His scheme of collecting and reforming the English laws still, even at the present day, appears to statesmen learned in the law to be an unavoidable necessity; and the opinion is spreading that steps must be taken in this matter in the direction already pointed out by Bacon.
Bacon was one of the last men who identified the welfare of England with the development of the monarchical element in the const.i.tution, or at all events with the preponderance of the authority of the sovereign within const.i.tutional limits. The union of the three kingdoms under the ruling authority of the King appeared to him to contain the foundation of the future greatness of Britain. With the a.s.sertion of the authority of the sovereign he connected the hope of a reform of the laws of England, of the establishment of a comprehensive system of colonisation in Ireland, and of the a.s.similation of the ecclesiastical and judicial const.i.tution of Scotland to English customs. He loved the monarchy because he expected great things from it.
But it cannot be denied that he brought his ideas into a connexion with his interests, which was fatal to the acceptance of the former.
His is just a case in which we feel relieved when we turn from the disputes of the day to the free domain of scientific activity, in which his true life was spent. He has indeed said himself that he was better fitted to hold a book in his hands than to s.h.i.+ne upon the stage of the world. In his studies he had only science itself and the whole of the world before his eyes.
The scholastic system founded on Aristotle, the inheritance of centuries of ecclesiastical supremacy, had been a.s.sailed some time before he took up the subject; and the inductive method which he opposed to that system was not anything quite new. But the idea of Bacon had the most comprehensive tendency: it tended to free the thoughts and enquiries of men of science from the a.s.sumptions of a speculative theology which regulated their spiritual horizon. The most renowned adversaries of scholasticism he had to encounter in turn, because they covered things with a new web of words and theories which he could not accept. He thought to free men from the deceptive notions by which their minds are prepossessed, from the fascination of words which throw a veil over things, and of tradition consecrated by great names, and to open to them the sphere of the certain knowledge of experience. Nature is in his eyes G.o.d's book, which man must study directly for His glory and for the relief of man's estate; he thought that men must start from sense and experience, in order that by intercourse with things they might discover the cause of phenomena.
He would have preferred for his own part to have been the architect of an universal science, an outline of which he had already composed; but he possessed the self-restraint to hold back from this in the first instance, to work at details, and to make experiments, or, as he once says, to contribute the bricks and stones which might serve for the great work in the future. He only wanted more complete devotion and more adequate knowledge for his task. His method is imperfect, his results are untrustworthy in points of detail; but his object is grand. He designates the insight for which he labours by the Herac.l.i.tean name of dry light, that is, a light which is obscured by no partiality and no subordinate aim. He would place the man who possesses it as it were upon the mountain top, at the foot of which errors chase one another like clouds. And in his eyes the satisfaction of the mind is not the only interest at stake, but such discoveries as rouse the activity of men and promote their welfare. Nature is at the same time the great storehouse of G.o.d: the dominion over nature which men originally possessed must be restored to them.
In these speculations the philosopher became aware that there was a risk lest men should imagine that by this means they could also discover the nature of G.o.d. Bacon lays down a complete separation of these two provinces; for he thinks that men can only attain to second causes, not to the first cause, which is G.o.d; and that the human mind can only cope with natural things; that divine things on the contrary confuse it. He will not even investigate the nature of the human soul, for it does not owe its origin to the productive powers of nature, but to the breath of G.o.d.
It had been from the beginning the tendency of those schools of philosophy erected on the basis of ancient systems, in which Latin and Teutonic elements were blended, to transfuse faith with scientific knowledge; but Bacon renounces this attempt from the beginning. He puts forward with almost repulsive abruptness the paradoxes which the Christian must believe: he declares it an Icarian flight to wish to penetrate these secrets: but so much stronger is the impulse he seeks to give the human mind in the direction of enquiry into natural objects.[379]
Among these he ranks the state of human society, to which all his life long he devoted a careful and searching observation. His Essays are not at all sceptical, like the French essays, from which he may have borrowed this appellation: they are thoroughly dogmatic. They consist of remarks on the relations of life as they then presented themselves, especially upon the points of contact between private and public life, and of counsels drawn from the perception of the conflicting qualities of things. They are extremely instructive for the internal relations of English society. They show wide observation and calm wisdom, and, like his philosophical works, are a treasure for the English nation, whose views of life have been built upon them.
What better legacy can one generation leave to another than the sum of its experiences which have an importance extending beyond the fleeting moment, when they are couched in a form which makes them useful for all time? Herein consists the earthly immortality of the soul.
But another possession of still richer contents and of incomparable value was secured to the English nation by the development of the drama, which falls just within this epoch.
In former times there had been theatrical representations in the palaces of the kings and of great men, in the universities, and among judicial and civic societies. They formed part of the enjoyments of the Carnival or contributed to the brilliancy of other festivities; but they did not come into full existence until Elizabeth allowed them to the people by a general permission. In earlier times the scholars of the higher schools or the members of learned fraternities, the artisans in the towns, and the members of the household of great men and princes, had themselves conducted the representation. Actors by profession now arose, who received pay and performed the whole year round.[380] A number of small theatres grew up which, as they charged but low entrance-fees, attracted the crowd, and while they influenced it, were influenced by it in turn. The government could not object to the theatre, as the princ.i.p.al opposition which it had to fear, that of the Puritans, shut itself out from exercising any influence over the drama, owing to the aversion of their party to it. The theatres vied with one another: each sought to bring out something new, and then to keep it to itself. The authors, among whom men of distinguished talent were found, were not unfrequently players as well. All materials from fable and from history, from the whole range of literature, which had been widely extended by native productions and by appropriation from foreign sources, were seized, and by constant elaboration adapted for an appreciative public.
While the town theatres and their productions were thus struggling to rise in mutual rivalry, the genius of William Shakspeare developed itself: at that time he was lost among the crowd of rivals, but his fame has increased from age to age among posterity.
It especially concerns us to notice that he brought on the stage a number of events taken from English history itself. In the praise which has been lavishly bestowed on him, of having rendered them with historical truth, we cannot entirely agree. For who could affirm that his King John and Henry VIII, his Gloucester and Winchester, or even his Maid of Orleans, resemble the originals whose names they bear? The author forms his own conception of the great questions at issue. While he follows the chronicle as closely as possible, and adopts its characteristic traits, he yet a.s.signs to each of the personages a part corresponding to the peculiar view he adopts: he gives life to the action by introducing motives which the historian cannot find or accept: characters which stand close together in tradition, as they probably did in fact, are set apart in his pages, each of them in a separately developed h.o.m.ogeneous existence of its own: natural human motives, which elsewhere appear only in private life, break the continuity of the political action, and thus obtain a twofold dramatic influence. But if deviations from fact are found in individual points, yet the choice of events to be brought upon the stage shows a deep sense of what is historically great. These are almost always situations and entanglements of the most important character: the interference of the spiritual power in an intestine political quarrel in King John: the sudden fall of a firmly seated monarchy as soon as ever it departs from the strict path of right in Richard III: the opposition which a usurping prince, Henry IV, meets with at the hands of the great va.s.sals who have placed him on the throne, and which brings him by incessant anxiety and mental labour to a premature grave: the happy issue of a successful foreign enterprise, the course of which we follow from the determination to prepare for it, to the risk of battle and to final victory; and then again in Henry V and Henry VI, the unhappy position into which a prince not formed by nature to be a ruler falls between violent contending parties, until he envies the homely swain who tends his flocks and lets the years run by in peace: lastly the path of horrible crime which a king's son not destined for the throne has to tread in order to ascend it: all these are great elements in the history of states, and are not only important for England, but are symbolic for all people and their sovereigns. The poet touches on parliamentary or religions questions extremely seldom; and it may be observed that in King John the great movements which led to Magna Charta are as good as left out of sight; on the contrary he lives and moves among the personal contrasts offered by the feudal system, and its mutual rights and duties.
Bolingbroke's feeling that though his cousin is King of England yet he is Duke of Lancaster reveals the conception of these rights in the middle ages. The speech which Shakspeare puts into the mouth of the Bishop of Carlisle is applicable to all times. The crown that secures the highest independence appears to the poet the most desirable of all possessions, but the honoured gold consumes him who wears it by the restless care which it brings with it.
Shakspeare depicts the popular storms which are wont to accompany a free const.i.tution in the plots of some of his Roman dramas: of these Plutarch instead of Holinshed furnishes the basis. He is right in taking them from a foreign country: for events nearer to his audience would have roused an interest of a different kind, and yet would not have had so universal a meaning. What could be more dramatic, for example, and at the same time more widely applicable than the contrast between the two speeches, by the first of which Caesar's murder is justified, while by the second the memory of his services is revived?
The conception of freedom which the first brings to life is set in opposition to the thought of the virtues and services of the possessor of absolute power, and thrust by them into the background; but these same feelings are the deepest and most active in all ages and among all nations.
But the attested traditions of ancient and modern times do not satisfy the poet in his wish to lay bare the depths of human existence. He takes us into the cloudy regions of British and Northern antiquity only known to fable, in which other contrasts between persons and in public affairs make their appearance. A king comes on the stage who in the plenitude of enjoyment and power is brought by overhasty confidence in his nearest kin to the extremest wretchedness into which men can fall. We see the heir to a throne who, dispossessed of his rights by his own mother and his father's murderer, is directed by mysterious influences to take revenge. We have before us a great n.o.bleman, who by atrocious murders has gained possession of the throne, and is slain in fighting for it: the poet brings us into immediate proximity with the crime, its execution, and its recoil: it seems like an inspiration of h.e.l.l and of its deceitful prophecies: we wander on the confines of the visible world and of that other world which lies on the other side, but extends over into this, where it forms the border-land between conscious sense and unconscious madness: the abysses of the human breast are opened to view, in which men are chained down and brought to destruction by powers of nature that dwell there unknown to them: all questions about existence and non-existence; about heaven, h.e.l.l, and earth; about freedom and necessity, are raised in these struggles for the crown. Even the tenderest feelings that rivet human souls to one another he loves to display upon a background of political life. Then we follow him from the cloudy North into sunny Italy. Shakspeare is one of the intellectual powers of nature; he takes away the veil by which the inward springs of action are hidden from the vulgar eye. The extension of the range of human vision over the mysterious being of things which his works offer const.i.tutes them a great historical fact.
We do not here enter upon a discussion of Shakspeare's art and characteristics, of their merits and defects: they were no doubt of a piece with the needs, habits, and mode of thought of his audience; for in what case could there be a stronger reciprocal action between an author and his public, than in that of a young stage depending upon voluntary support? The very absence of conventional rule made it easier to put on the stage a drama by which all that is grandest and mightiest is brought before the eyes as if actually present in that medley of great and small things which is characteristic of human life. Genius is an independent gift of G.o.d: whether it is allowed to expand or not depends on the receptivity and taste of its contemporaries.
It is certainly no unimportant circ.u.mstance that Shakspeare brought out King Lear soon after the accession of James I, who, like his predecessor, loved the theatre; and that Francis Bacon dedicated to the King his work on the Advancement of Learning in the same year 1605.
Of these two great minds the first bodied forth in imperishable forms the tradition, the poetry, and the view of the world that belonged to the past: the second banished from the domain of science the a.n.a.logies which they offered, and made a new path for the activity displayed by succeeding centuries in the conquest of nature, and for a new view of the world.
Many others laboured side by side with them. The investigation of nature had already entered on the path indicated by Bacon, and was welcomed with lively interest, especially among the upper cla.s.ses.