The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded. Bacon Delia Salter
of vain and disastrous resistance had at last subdued, and to a spirit which seemed reduced at last, to the mere quality of the master's will.
That was a narrow dominion apparently to which King James consigned his great rival in the arts of government, but that rival of his contrived to rear a 'crest' there which will outlast 'the tyrants,' and 'look fresh still' when tombs that artists were at work on then 'are spent.' 'And when a soldier was his theme, my name – my name [namme de plume] was nor far off.' King James forgot how many weapons this man carried. He took one sword from him, he did not know that that pen, that harmless goose-quill, carried in its sheath another. He did not know what strategical operations the scholar, who was 'an old soldier' and a politician also, was capable of conducting under such conditions. Those were narrow quarters for 'the Shepherd of the Ocean,' for the hero of the two hemispheres, to occupy so long; but it proved no bad retreat for the chief of this movement, as he managed it. It was in that school of Elizabethan statesmanship which had its centre in the Tower, that many a scholarly English gentleman came forth prepared to play his part in the political movements that succeeded. It was out of that school of statesmanship that John Hampden came, accomplished for his part in them.
The papers that the chief of the Protestant cause prepared in that literary retreat to which the Monarch had consigned him, by means of those secret channels of communication among the better minds which he had established in the reign of Elizabeth, became the secret manual of the revolutionary chiefs; they made the first blast of the trumpet that summoned at last the nation to its feet. 'The famous Mr. Hamden' (says an author, who writes in those 'next ages' in which so many traditions of this time are still rife) 'a little before the civil wars was at the charge of transcribing three thousand four hundred and fifty-two sheets of Sir Walter Raleigh's MSS., as the amanuensis himself told me, who had his close chamber, his fire and candle, with an attendant to deliver him the originals and take his copies as fast as he could write them.' That of itself is a pretty little glimpse of the kind of machinery which the Elizabethan literature required for its 'delivery and tradition' at the time, or near the times, in which it was produced. That is a view of 'an Interior' 'before the civil wars.' It was John Milton who concluded, on looking over, a long time afterwards, one of the unpublished papers of this statesman, that it was his duty to give it to the public. 'Having had,' he says, 'the MS. of this treatise ["The Cabinet Council"] written by Sir Walter Raleigh, many years in my hands, and finding it lately by chance among other books and papers, upon reading thereof, I thought it a kind of injury to withhold longer the work of so eminent an author from the public; it being both answerable in style to other works of his already extant, as far as the subject would permit, and given me for a true copy by a learned man at his death, who had collected several such pieces.'
'A kind of injury.' – That is the thought which would naturally take possession of any mind, charged with the responsibility of keeping back for years this man's writings, especially his choicest ones – papers that could not be published then on account of the subject, or that came out with the leaves uncut, labouring with the restrictions which the press opposed then to the issues of such a mind.
That great result which the chief minds of the Modern Ages, under the influence of the new culture, in that secret association of them were able to achieve, that new and all comprehending science of life and practice which they made it their business to perfect and transmit, could not, indeed, as yet be communicated directly to the many. The scientific doctrines of the new time were necessarily limited in that age to the few. But another movement corresponding to that, simultaneous in its origin, related to it in its source, was also in progress here then, proceeding hand in hand with this, playing its game for it, opening the way to its future triumph. This was that movement of the new time, – this was that consequence, not of the revival of learning only, but of the growth of the northern mind which touched everywhere and directly the springs of government, and made 'bold power look pale,' for this was the movement in 'the many.'
This was the movement which had already convulsed the continent; this was the movement of which Raleigh was from the first the soldier; this was 'the cause' of which he became the chief. It was as a youth of seventeen, bursting from those old fastnesses of the Middle Ages that could not hold him any longer, shaking off the films of Aristotle and his commentators, that he girded on his sword for the great world-battle that was raging already in Europe then. It was into the thickest of it, that his first step plunged him. For he was one of that company of a hundred English gentlemen who were waiting but for the first word of permission from Elizabeth to go as volunteers to the aid of the Huguenots. This was the movement which had at last reached England. And like these other continental events which were so slow in taking effect in England when it did begin to unfold here at last; there was a taste of 'the island' in it, in this also.
It was not on the continent only, that Raleigh and other English statesmen were disposed to sustain this movement. It was not possible as yet to bring the common mind openly to the heights of those great doctrines of life and practice which the Wisdom of the Moderns also embodies, but the new teachers of that age knew how to appreciate, as the man of science only can fully appreciate, the worth of those motives that were then beginning to agitate so portentously so large a portion of the English people. The Elizabethan politicians nourished and patronised in secret that growing faction. The scientific politician hailed with secret delight, hailed as the partner of his own enterprise, that new element of political power which the changing time began to reveal here then, that power which was already beginning to unclasp on the necks of the masses, the collar of the absolute will – that was already proclaiming, in the stifled undertones of 'that greater part which carries it,' another supremacy. They gave in secret the right hand of a joyful fellowship to it. At home and abroad the great soldier and statesman, who was the first founder of the Modern Science, headed that faction. He fought its battles by land and sea; he opened the New World to it, and sent it there to work out its problem.
It was the first stage of an advancement that would not rest till it found its true consummation. That infinity which was speaking in its confused tones, as with the voice of many waters, was resolved into music and triumphal marches in the ear of the Interpreter. It gave token that the nobler nature had not died out under the rod of tyranny; it gave token of the earnestness that would not be appeased until the ends that were declared in it were found.
But at the same time, this was a power which the wise men of that age were far from being willing to let loose upon society then in that stage of its development; very far were they from being willing to put the reins into its hands. To balance the dangers that were threatening the world at that crisis was always the problem. It was a very narrow line that the policy which was to save the state had to keep to then. There were evils on both sides. But to the scientific mind there appeared to be a choice in them. The measure on one side had been taken, and it was in all men's hearts, but the abysses on the other no man had sounded. 'The danger of stirring things,' – the dangers, too, of that unscanned swiftness that too late ties leaden pounds to his heels were the dangers that were always threatening the Elizabethan movement, and defining and curbing it. The wisest men of that time leaned towards the monarchy, the monarchy that was, rather than the anarchy that was threatening them. The will of the one rather than the wills of the many, the head of the one rather than 'the many-headed.' To effect the change which the time required without 'wrenching all' – without undoing the work of ages – without setting at large from the restraints of reverence and custom the chained tiger of an unenlightened popular will, this was the problem. The wisest statesmen, the most judicious that the world has ever known were here, with their new science, weighing in exactest scales those issues. We must not quarrel with their concessions to tyranny on the one hand, nor with their determination to effect changes on the other, until we are able to command entirely the position they occupied, and the opposing dangers they had always to consider. We must not judge them till they have had their hearing. What freedom and what hope there is of it upon the earth to-day, is the legacy of their perseverance and endurance.
They experienced many defeats. The hopes of youth, the hopes of manhood in turn grew cold. That the 'glorious day' which 'flattered the mountain tops' of their immortal morning with its sovereign eye would never shine on them; that their own, with all its unimagined splendours obscured so long, would go down hid in those same 'base clouds,' that for them the