The Interpretation of Nature. What he meant by nature in this connection he tells us in the "Novum "Organum, thus: "It may be asked whether I speak of natural philosophy alone, or whether I mean that the other sciences, logic, ethics and politics, should also be carried on by this method. Now I certainly mean what I have said to be understood of them all; and as the common logic, which governs by the syllogism, extends not only to natural, but also to all sciences, so does mine, which, proceeding by induction, embraces everything. For I form a history and tables of discovery for anger, fear, shame and the like; for matters political; and again for the mental operations of memory, composition, division, judgment and the rest, not less than for heat and cold, or light, or vegetation." (CXXVII.) says further, eleswhere and with more particularity, that he will treat of the "characters and dispositions of men as they are affected by sex, by age, by religion, by health, and illness, by beauty and deformity; and also of those which are caused by fortune, as sovereignty, nobility, obscure birth, riches, want, magistracy, prosperity and adversity."

He

Bacon's philosophy, therefore, as he conceived it, embraced our whole being, the mind and its traits as well as the physical powers by which we are governed.. It had no other limitation than that of our life and its interests here on the earth.

Among the personal qualifications of such an interpreter, as laid down by Bacon, is one to which thus far little attention has been given, viz.: "Let him manage his personal affairs under a mask, but with due regard to the circumstances in which he is placed."* This is probably as clear a statement on the point as Bacon deemed it prudent to make, but

*The original Latin is as personatus administret rerum

rans.

follows: Privata negotia tamen provisus subvene

the following inference from it is unmistakable; any person who would undertake Bacon's work as a philosopher and carry it on as he did must wear a mask. Therefore it follows that Bacon himself wore one. That is, he wrote under a pseudonym.

The author of the Plays also wore a mask, for the name he assumed-Shake-speare-could not possibly have been his true one. No such patronymic was ever known in the history of the world. It seems to have been derived from Palias, the goddess of wisdom, and who was represented in the statuary art of the Greeks with an immense spear in her right hand. She was known indeed as the Spear-shaker or Shake-speare of the Grecian civilization.

This name, with a hyphen between the syllables, appears fifteen times in the Shake-spearean Plays. In Liddell and Scott's Greek-English lexicon the name of Pallas is etymologically given as The Brandisher of the Spear.

CONTEMPORANEOUS ALLUSIONS TO

THE SHAKE-SPEARE PLAYS.

"After such sports, a Comedy of Errors (like to Plautus his Menechmus) was played by the players; so that night was begun, and continued to the end, in nothing but confusion and errors, whereupon it was ever afterwards called The Night of Errors."-Gesta Grayorum, p. 22, ed. 1688.

"I have been told by some ancient conversant with the stage, that Titus Andronicus was not originally the actor Shakspere's but brought up by a private author to be acted."-Sir Edw. Ravenscroft. 1678.

"The author of 'Hamlet' was one of the 'trade of Noverint in which he was born.'"-Thomas Nash in the preface to Green's Menaphone.

Lord Campbell explains: "The trade of Noverint is the profession of Law, etc."

P. S. "The most prodigious wit that I ever knew of my nation, and of this side of the sea, is of your Lordship's name, though he be known by another."-Letter from Sir Tobie Matthews.

"I knew one that when he wrote a letter would put that which was most material in the postscript, as if it had been a bye matter."-Essay of Cunning.

"Tragedies and comedies are made of one alphabet."-Prom. 516.

"Those works of the alphabet are of less use to you where your are now, than at Paris."-Letter to Sir Tobie Matthew (1609).

"It's time to put the alphabet in a frame.”—Letter to Matthew, 1622.

"I shall not promise to return you weight for weight, but measure for measure."-Matthew to Bacon, 1602.

"As it is used in some comedies of errors."Adv. of Learning,

"Come now, all is well."-Apophthegms.

"All is well that ends well."-Promus No. 949. "I'm putting it to misunderstanding, fear, passion, or what you will."-Essays.

"Prophecies, dreams, and predictions ought to serve but for Winter's talke (Contes d'hiver)."Essays,

"By Mr. Francis William Shakespeare-Richard the Second. Bacon-Richard the Third."-Northumberland Manuscripts.

FRANCIS BACON'S ALLUSIONS TO THE

DRAMA.

"The division of poesy which is aptest in the propriety thereof is into poesy narrative, representative, and allusive. Representation is as a

visible

history, and is an image of actions, as if they were present."

"But he played it merely as if he had been upon the stage."

"But men must know that in this theatre of man's life it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers on."-Adv. of Learning.

"The people being in theatres at plays."-Nat. Hist.

"And accordingly to frame him and instruct him in the part he was to play

"And none could hold the book so well to prompt

and instruct this stage play as she could." "He thought good (after the manner of scenes in stage plays and masks) to show it far off."

"Fortune commonly doth not bring in a comedy or farce after a tragedy."

"Perkin, acting the part of a prince handsomely." "The stage where a base counterfeit should play the part of a king."

"Therefore now like the end of a play, a great number came upon the stage at once."-Hist. of Henry VII.

"The stage is more beholden to love than the life of man. For as to the stage love is ever a matter of comedies and now and then of tragedies."

"I have given a rule where a man cannot fitly play his own part if he have not a friend, he may quit the stage."—Essays.

"If the lookers on be affected with pleasure in the representation of a feigned tragedy."

"Your life is nothing but a continual acting upon a stage."-The Devices.

"I have no desire to stage myself."-Private Papers.

"This being the platform of their enterprise, the second act of this tragedy."

"That the afternoon before the rebellion, Merrick with a great company of others that afterwards were all in the action, had procured to be played before them, the play of deposing King Richard the 2nd."-The Essex Trial.

"But (my_lords) where I speak of a stage. I doubt I hold you upon the stage too long."

"Then was the time to execute the last act of this tragedy."-Speeches.

"This entrance upon the stage."

"I liked well that Allen playeth this last act of his life well." Letters to Buckingham.

"I mean that those writings, on anger, fear, shame and the like, are to be actual types and models, by which the entire process of the mind and the whole fabric and order of invention on certain subjects, and those various and remarkable may be, from beginning to end, set, as it were, before the eyes."-Francis Bacon.

This is a small part of Bacon's allusions to the stage, many more of which can be found in "Francis Bacon's Cryptic Rhymes," by Edwin Bormann.

COMMENTS.

"The most exquisitely constructed intellect that has ever been bestowed on any of the children of men."-Macaulay.

"The great glory of literature in this island, during the reign of James was my Lord Bacon."Hume.

"Lord Bacon was the greatest genius that England, or perhaps any other country, ever produced."-Pope.

"One of the most colossal of the sons of men." -G. L. Craik.

"Crown of all modern authors."-George Sandys.

"He possessed at once all those extraordinary