"O that you were yourselfe, but love you are No longer yours, then you yourselfe here live, Against this cunning end you should prepare, And your sweet semblance to some other give
Who lets so faire a house fall to decay
O none but unthrifts, deare my love you know You had a Father, let your Son say so."
"But wherefore do not you a mightier waie Make warre uppon this bloodie tirant Time?
And fortifie your selfe in your decay With meanes more blessed, then my barren rime?
Now stand you on the top of happie houres And many maiden gardens, yet onset, With virtuous wish would beare you living flowers Much liker than your painted counterfeit:
Who will beleeve my verses in time to come If it were fil"d with your most high deserts?
Though yet heaven knows, it is but as a tombe _Which hides your life_, and shewes not halfe your parts: If I could write the beauty of your eyes And in fresh numbers number all your graces, The age to come would say this Poet lies, Such heavenly touches nere toucht earthly faces.
So should my papers (yellowed with their age) Be scorn"d, like old men of lesse truth than tongue, And your true rights be termd a Poets rage And stretched miter of an Antique song.
But were some childe of yours alive that time, You should live twise, in it and in my rime."
"Yet doe thy worst, ould Time, dispight thy wrong My love shall in my verse ever live young."
He realises that he no longer answers Ophelia"s description:
"The courtier"s, soldier"s, scholar"s eye, tongue, sword: The expectancy and rose of the fair state The gla.s.s of fashion and the mould of form, The observed of all observers....
That unmatch"d form and feature of blown youth."
But he cannot forget what he has been, he cannot realise that he is no longer the brilliant youth whose miniature he has before him, with the words inscribed around, "Si tabula daretur digna animum mallem"--If materials could be found worthy to paint his mind ("O could he but have drawn his wit") and then with a burst of poetic enthusiasm he exclaims:--
"Tis thee (myselfe) that for myselfe I praise, Painting my age with beauty of thy daies."
This is the common experience of a man as he advances in life. So long as he does not see his reflection in a gla.s.s, if he tries to visualize himself, he sees the youth or young man. Only in his most pessimistic moments does he realise his age.
There is no longer any difficulty in understanding Shakespeare"s Sonnets. They were addressed by "Shakespeare," the poet, to the marvellous youth who was known under the name of Francis Bacon, and they were written, with Hilliard"s portrait placed on his table before him.
In that age (please G.o.d it may be the present age), which is known only to G.o.d and to the fates when the finishing touch shall be given to Bacon"s fame,[50] it will be found that the period of his life from twelve to thirty-five years of age surpa.s.sed all others, not only in brilliant intellectual achievements, but for the enduring wealth with which he endowed his countrymen. And yet it was part of his scheme of life that his connection with the great renaissance in English literature should lie hidden until posterity should recognise that work as the fruit of his brain:--"Mente Videbor"--"by the mind I shall be seen."
How lacking all his modern biographers have been in perception!
Every difficulty in those which are termed the procreation Sonnets disappears with the application of this key. Only by it can Sonnet 22 be made intelligible:--
"My gla.s.s shall not persuade me I am old, As long as youth and thou are of one date; But when in thee time"s furrow I behold, Then look, I death my days would expirate For all that beauty that doth cover thee Is but the steady raiment of my heart.
Which in my breast doth live, as thine in me.
How can I then be older than thou art?
O, therefore, love, be of thyself so wary As I, not for myself, but for thee will; Bearing thy heart, which I will keep so chary As tender nurse her babe from faring ill.
Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain; Thou gavest me thine, not to give back again."
But nearly every Sonnet might be quoted in support of this view.
Especially is it of value in bringing an intelligent and allowable explanation to Sonnets 40, 41, and 42, which now no longer have an unsavoury flavour.
Sonnet No. 59 is most noteworthy, because it implies a belief in re-incarnation. Shakespeare expresses his longing to know what the ancients would have said of his marvellous intellect. If he could find his picture in some antique book over 500 years old, see an image of himself as he then was, and learn what men thought of him!
"If their bee nothing new, but that which is Hath beene before, how are our braines begulld, Which laboring for invention, beare amisse The second burthen of a former child?
Oh that record could with a back-ward looke, Even of five hundredth courses of the Sunne, Show me your image in some antique booke, Since minde at first in carrecter was done, That I might see what the old world could say To this composed wonder of your frame; Whether we are mended, or where better they, Or whether revolution be the same.
Oh sure I am, the wits of former daies, To subjects worse have given admiring praise."
There is the same idea in Sonnet 71, which suggests that in some future re-incarnation Bacon might read Shakespeare"s praises of him.
Conjectures as to who was the rival poet may be dispensed with. The following rendering of Sonnet No. 80 makes this perfectly clear:--
"O how I (_the poet_) faint when I of you (_F.B._) do write, Knowing a better spirit (_that of the philosopher_) doth use your name And in the praise thereof spends all his might To make me tongue tied, speaking of your fame!
(_Shakespeare never refers to Bacon or vice-versa_) But since your (_F.B."s_) worth wide as the ocean is, The humble as the proudest sail doth bear, My saucy bark (_that of the poet_) inferior far to his (_that of the philosopher_), On your broad main doth wilfully appear.
Your shallowest help will hold me (_the poet_) up afloat Whilst he (_the philosopher_) upon your soundless deep doth ride."
It is impossible to do justice to this subject in the s.p.a.ce here available. By the aid of this key every line becomes intelligible. The charm and beauty of the Sonnets are increased tenfold. Every unpleasant a.s.sociation of them is removed. No longer need Browning say, "If so the less Shakespeare he."
These are not "Shakespeare"s sug"rd[51] Sonnets amongst his private friends" to which Meres makes reference. They are to be found elsewhere.
If there had been an intelligent study of Elizabethan literature from original sources the authorship of the Sonnets would have been revealed long ago. It was a habit of Bacon to speak of himself as some one apart from the speaker. The opening sentence of _Filum Labyrinthi, Sivo Forma Inquisitiones_ is an example. _Ad Filios_--"Francis Bacon thought in this manner." Prefixed to the preface to Gilbert Wats" interpretation of the "Advancement of Learning" is a chapter commencing, "Francis Lo Verulam consulted thus: and thus concluded with himselfe. The publication whereof he conceived did concern the present and future age."
Nothing that has been written is more perfectly Baconian in style and temperament than are the Sonnets. They breathe out his hopes, his aspirations, his ideals, his fears, in every line. He knew he was not for his time. He knew future generations only would render him the fame to which his incomparable powers ent.i.tled him. He knew how far he towered above his contemporaries, aye, and his predecessors, in intellectual power. His hopes were fixed on that day in the distant future--to-day--when for the first time the meshes which he wove, behind which his life"s work is obscured, are beginning to be unravelled.
The most sanguine Baconian, in his most enthusiastic moments, must fail adequately to appreciate the achievements of Francis Bacon and the obligations under which he has placed posterity. But Bacon knew--and he alone knew--their full value. It was fitting that the greatest poet which the world had produced should in matchless verse do honour to the world"s greatest intellect. It was a pretty conceit. Only a master mind would dare to make the attempt. The result has afforded another example of how his great wit, in being concealed, was revealed.
FOOTNOTES:
[48] Sonnet No. 2.
[49] _"Tis thee myselfe_, Sonnet 62.
[50] See Rawley"s Introduction to "Manes Verulamiana."
[51] The expression "sugr"d Sonnets" refers to verses which were written with coloured ink to which sugar had been added. When dry the writing shone brightly.
CHAPTER XXI.
BACON"S LIBRARY.
In the "Advancement of Learning" Bacon refers to the annotations of books as being deficient. There was living at the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century a scholar through whose hands at least several thousand books pa.s.sed. He appears to have made a practice of annotating in the margins every book he read. The chief purpose, however, of the notes, apparently, was to aid the memory, for in some books nearly every name occurring in the text is carried into the margin without comment. The notes are also accompanied by scrolls, marks, and brackets, which support the contention that they are the work of one man. The annotation of books was not a common practice then, nor has it been since. If a reader takes up a hundred books in a second-hand book shop he will probably not find more than one containing ma.n.u.script notes, and not one in five hundred in which the annotations have been systematically carried through. There does not appear to have been any other scholar living at that time, with the exception of this one, who was persistently making marginal notes on the books he read.
Spedding writes: "What became of his (Bacon"s) books, which were left to Sir John Constable and must have contained traces of his reading, we do not know; but very few appear to have survived."
Mrs. Pott, in "Francis Bacon and his Secret Society," draws attention to the mystery as to the disappearance of Bacon"s library. "Which is a mystery," she adds, "although the world has been content to take it very apathetically. Where is Bacon"s library? Undoubtedly the books exist and are traceable. We should expect them to be recognisable by marginal notes; yet those notes, whether in pencil or in ink, may have been effaced. If annotated, Bacon and his friends would not wish his books to attract public attention." And further on: "It is probable that the latter (_i.e._, the books) will seldom or never be found to bear his name or signature." And again: "Yet it may reasonably be antic.i.p.ated that some at least are "noted in the margin," or that some will be found with traces of marks which were guides to the transcriber or amanuensis as to the portions which were to be copied for future use in Bacon"s collections or book of commonplaces." Mrs. Pott"s words were written in a spirit of true prophecy.