"Nothing is more certain," says Mr. Wigston, " than that the play of Anthony and Cleopatra' was composed with an entirely ethical purpose of portraying the calamities and disasters that accompany inordinate and irregular love."

A brilliant comet, which is said to have made its appearance at the time of Julius Cæsar's death, was in popular belief the soul of Cæsar himself, received up into heaven. Virgil (Eclog. 9. 46) calls this comet " Cæsar's Star." Bacon and Shake-speare both refer to it under the same name, the former hoping that its influence on the great work, Novum

Organum, would be favorable, and the latter declaring that at Henry the Fifth's death the English warrior's star would be even more glorious than was Cæsar's. Bacon quoted Virgil's lines.

Puffing at all, winnows the light out endangering the other; and

away;

And what hath mass or matter, by
itself

Lies, rich in virtue and unmingled."
Troilus and Cressida, i. 3 (1609).

what are mingled but as the chaff and the corn, which need but a fan to sift and sever them." Pacification of the Church (1603).

See Donnelly's 'The Great Cryptogram,' p. 368.

Whispers the o'erfraught heart spirit to prey upon the juices of

and bids it break."

Macbeth, iv. 3 (1623). and let loose is beneficial.”

the body. But anger indulged

History of Life and Death (1623).

The Great Cryptogram,' p. 372.

386

"To hold, as 't were, the mirror up to nature."

MIND, A MIRROR HELD UP TO NATURE

"God hath framed the mind of man as a glass capable of the image Hamlet, iii. 2 (1604). of the universal world." — Of the Interpretation of Nature (c. 1603).

"The mind of a wise man is compared to a glass wherein images of all kinds in nature and custom

Bacon explained the existence of error in the world as an imperfection in the mind as a glass, "which" (he says), "receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolors the nature of things" (Novum Organum). On one occasion he even reversed the imagery, calling Nature herself a "mirror (speculum) of art.”

Of all writers on music known to us, Mr. Chappel is the only one who has undertaken to explain what was meant in Bacon's time by "broken music." He defined it, in his 'Popular Music of the Olden Time,' as the "music of wind instruments," but subsequently intimated, in a private letter to Mr. Aldis A. Wright, that on further consideration he had discarded that opinion and adopted another, the latter, however (as it appears to us), still less tenable. It is a pity

he did not consult Bacon, perhaps the best authority of that age on the musical art; for if he had, he would have found no mystery in the phrase. The author of the Plays was so familiar with the expression that he made a pun on it in 'Henry V.'

"King Henry. Come, your answer in broken music; for thy voice is music, and thy English broken; therefore, queen of all, Katharine, break thy mind to me in broken English: wilt thou have me?" v. 2.

From the beginning until late in the seventeenth century, and in a few instances, even in the eighteenth, these two words, council and counsel, were used interchangeably in our language. For examples: council (council-board) was written counsel by Marbeck in 1581; by Sir R. Williams in 1590; by

Captain John Smith in 1606; by Cotgrave in 1611; and by the London Gazette' in 1697. In like manner the word counsel (advice) was written council by Wyclif in 1380; by Mallory in 1470; by Caxton in 1474; by Coverdale in 1535; by Udall in 1548; by Heywood in 1562; by Ford in 1633; by Perkins in 1642; by Ward in 1647; by Nicholas in 1654; by Steele in 1709; and by Cibber in 1739. On the other hand, the author of the Plays used the word council 42 times, and counsel 180 times without confusing them in a single instance. He even makes a pun on them (as above) in the 'Merry Wives of Windsor.' Bacon, though proverbially careless in matters of detail, observed this distinction with great care in his prose writings, except in one or two instances in which he is supposed to have employed