The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded. Bacon Delia Salter

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СКАЧАТЬ points as this. He must be perpetually on his guard that the identity of that which he presents here, and that which he presents elsewhere, under other and very different forms (in much graver forms perhaps, and perhaps in others not so grave), shall no where become so glaring as to attract popular attention, while he is willing and anxious to keep that identity or connection constantly present to the apprehension of the few, for whom he tells us his book – that is, this book within the book – is written.

      'I fear in these reveries of mine,' he continues, suspending at last suddenly this bold and continuous application to the immediate political emergency of those philosophical principles which he has exhibited in the abstract, in their common and universal form, elsewhere; 'I fear, in these reveries of the treachery of my memory, lest by inadvertence it should make me write the same thing twice. Now I here set down nothing new, these are common thoughts, and having per-adventure conceived them a hundred times, I am afraid I have set them down somewhere else already. Repetition is everywhere troublesome, though it were in Homer, but 'tis ruinous in things that have only a superficial and transitory SHOW. I do not love inculcation, even in the most profitable things, as in Seneca, and the practice of his Stoical school displeases me of repeating upon every subject and at length, THE PRINCIPLES and PRESUPPOSITIONS THAT SERVE IN GENERAL, and always to re-allege anew;' that is, under the particular divisions of the subject, common and universal reasons. 'What I cannot express I point out with my finger,' he tells you elsewhere, but it is thus that he continues here.

      'My memory grows worse and worse every day. I must fain for the time to come (collateral sounds), for hitherto, thank God, nothing has happened much amiss, to avoid all preparation, for fear of tying myself to some obligation upon which I must be forced to insist. To be tied and bound to a thing puts me quite out, and especially where I have to depend upon so weak an instrument as my memory. I never could read this story without being offended at it, with as it were a personal and natural resentment.' The reader will note that the question here is of style, or method, and of this author's style in particular, and of his special embarrassments.

      'Lyncestes accused of conspiracy against Alexander, the day that he was brought out before the army, according to the custom, to be heard in his defence, had prepared a studied speech, of which, haggling and stammering, he pronounced some words. As he was becoming more perplexed and struggling with his memory, and trying to recollect himself, the soldiers that stood nearest killed him with their spears, looking upon his confusion and silence as a confession of his guilt: very fine, indeed! The place, the spectators, the expectation, would astound a man even though were there no object in his mind but to speak well; but WHAT when 'tis an harangue upon which his life depends?' You that happen to be of my ear, it is my style that we are speaking of, and there is my story.

      'For my part the very being tied to what I am to say, is enough to loose me from it' – that is the cause of his wandering – 'The more I trust to my memory, the more do I put myself out of my own power, so much as to find it in my own countenance, and have sometimes been very much put to it to conceal the slavery wherein I was bound, whereas my design is to manifest in speaking a perfect nonchalance, both of face and accent, and casual and unpremeditated motions, as rising from present occasions, choosing rather to say nothing to purpose, than to show that I came prepared to speak well; a thing especially unbecoming a man of my profession. The preparation begets a great deal more expectation than it will satisfy; a man very often absurdly strips himself to his doublet to leap no further than he would have done in his gown.' [Perhaps the reflecting scholar will recollect to have seen an instance of this magnificent preparation for saying something to the purpose, attended with similarly lame conclusions; but, if he does not, the story which follows may tend to refresh his memory on this point.] 'It is recorded of the orator Curio, that when he proposed the division of his oration into three or four parts, it often happened either that he forgot some one, or added one or two more.' A much more illustrious speaker, who spoke under circumstances not very unlike those in which the poor conspirator above noted made his haggling and fatal attempts at oratory, is known to have been guilty of a similar oversight; for, having invented a plan of universal science, designed for the relief of the human estate, he forgot the principal application of it. But this author says, I have always avoided falling into this inconvenience, having always hated these promises and announcements, not only out of distrust of my memory, but also because this method relishes too much of the artificial. You will find no scientific plan here ostentatiously exhibited; you will find such a plan elsewhere with all the works set down in it, but the works themselves will be missing; and you will find the works elsewhere, but it will be under the cover of a superficial and transitory show, where it would be ruinous to produce the plan, 'I have always avoided falling into this inconvenience. Simpliciora militares decent.' But as he appears, after all, to have had no military weapon with which to sustain that straight-forwardness of speech which is becoming in a military power, and no dagger to pursue his points with, some artifice, though he professes not to like it, may be necessary, and the rule which he here specifies is, on the whole, perhaps, not altogether amiss. ''Tis enough that I have promised to myself never to take upon me to speak in a place where I owe respect; for as to that sort of speaking where a man reads his speech, besides that it is very absurd, it is a mighty disadvantage to those who naturally could give it a grace by action, and to rely upon the mercy of the readiness of my invention, I will much less do it; 'tis heavy and perplexed, and such as would never furnish me in sudden and important necessities.'

      'Speaking,' he says in another place, 'hurts and discomposes me, – my voice is loud and high, so that when I have gone to whisper some great person about an affair of consequence, they have often had to moderate my voice. This story deserves a place here.

      'Some one in a certain Greek school was speaking loud as I do. The master of the ceremonies sent to him to speak lower. "Tell him then, he must send me," replied the other, "the tone he would have me speak in." To which the other replied, "that he should take the tone from the ear of him to whom he spake." It was well said, if it be understood. Speak according to the affair you are speaking about to the auditor, – (speak according to the business you have in hand, to the purpose you have to accomplish) – for if it mean, it is sufficient that he hears you, I do not find it reason.' It is a more artistic use of speech that he is proposing in his new science of it, for as Lord Bacon has it, who writes as we shall see on this same subject, 'the proofs and persuasions of rhetoric ought to differ according to the auditors,' and the Arts of Rhetoric have for their legitimate end, 'not merely PROOF, but much more, IMPRESSION.' 'For many forms are equal in signification which are differing in impression, as the difference is great in the piercing of that which is sharp, and that which is flat, though the strength of the percussion be the same; for instance, there is no man but will be a little more raised, by hearing it said, "Your enemies will be glad of this," than by hearing it said only, "This is evil for you."' But it is thus that our Gascon proceeds, whose comment on his Greek story we have interrupted. 'There is a voice to flatter, there is a voice to instruct, and a voice to reprehend. I would not only have my voice to reach my hearer, but peradventure that it strike and pierce him. When I rate my footman in a sharp and bitter tone, it would be very fine for him to say, "Pray master, speak lower, for I hear you very well." Speaking is half his that speaks, and half his that hears; the last ought to prepare himself to receive it, according to its motion, as with tennis players; he that receives the ball, shifts, draws back, and prepares himself to receive it, according as he sees him move, who strikes the stroke, and according to the stroke itself.' It is not, therefore, because this author has failed to furnish the rules of interpretation necessary for penetrating to the ultimate intention of this new kind of speaking, if all this affectation of simplicity, and all these absurd contradictory statements of his, have been suffered hitherto to pass unchallenged. It is the public mind he has to deal with. 'That which he adores in kings is the throng of their adorers.' If he should take the public СКАЧАТЬ