In both passages, as Mr. Wigston notes, the storms referred to under this metaphor are political.

It is very probable that Bacon had Warwick's career in mind when he wrote the above sentence (the first part of it in 1597 and the latter part for the third edition of his Essays in 1625); for that was the most conspicuous instance of wind-changing" that had happened down to that period in the history of England. He amplified the thought still more in the Latin edition, thus: "they have been long sure of the goodwill and zeal of the other faction, and so prepare themselves to gain new friends."

The word "purchase" is used by Bacon, as it frequently is by Shake-speare, in its strictly legal sense, of acquisition

by any method other than inheritance. To purchase a thing is to pay an equivalent for it; and in one way or another, excepting in the case of an inheritance, a man pays for everything he acquires. Even a theft has its price.

Bellerophon, having committed an offence at the court at Argos and being protected from punishment there by the rites of hospitality, was sent away to the king of Lycia with a sealed letter, in which the king was requested to

put the bearer to death. Such letters were thence called "Bellerophon's Letters." Bacon's entry of these words in his Promus was made to remind him of this device in correspondence for use in his writings. No other hint of a letter of this kind can be found in all his works, unless the perfect example of it in Hamlet' be his.

Shall you pace forth; your praise

shall still find room,

E'en in the eyes of all posterity

That wear this world out to the ending doom."

Sonnet 55 (1609).

No comment on Shake-speare has been more often or more approvingly quoted than one of Jonson's: "he [Shakespeare] was not of an age, but for all time." How exactly these words also describe Bacon's literary ambition, as above expressed!

A MURDERED MAN'S WOUNDS BLEEDING AFRESH

"If thou delight to view thy hein

ous deeds,

Behold this pattern of thy butcher-
ies.

O! gentlemen, see, see! dead
Henry's wounds

Open their congeal'd mouths and
bleed afresh."

Richard III., i. 2 (1597).

"If the body of one murdered be brought before the murderer, the wounds will bleed afresh.". Natural History (1622-25).

In his prose treatment of this subject Bacon makes several points that are not alluded to in Shake-speare, and that must have come from independent sources, thus:

"Some do affirm that the dead body, upon the presence of the murderer, hath opened the eyes; and that there have been such like motions, as well, where the party murdered hath been strangled or drowned, as where they have been killed by wounds."

He makes the same superstition the subject of an apothegm:

"A lover met his lady in a close chair, she thinking to go unknown. He came and spake to her. She asked him—'how did you know me?' He said, 'because my wounds bleed afresh.'"

191

REBELLION AGAINST THE BELLY

From Shake-speare

"There was a time when all the

body's members Rebell'd against the belly; thus accused it:

That only like a gulf it did remain I' the midst of the body, idle and inactive,

Still cupboarding the viand, never bearing

Like labor with the rest, where the

other instruments

Did see and hear, devise, instruct, walk, feel,

And, mutually participate, did

minister

Unto the appetite and affection

common

Of the whole body."

Coriolanus, i. 1 (1623).

Found in Plutarch (1579), and in Sir Philip Sidney's 'Apology for Poetry' (1581). Coriolanus' was probably written sometime between 1612 and 1619; first printed in 1623.