AIR POISONED BY FOUL BREATHS "The rabblement shouted and clapped their chopped hands, and threw up their sweaty night-caps, and uttered such a deal of stinking breath, because Cæsar refused the crown, that it had almost choked Cæsar; for he swooned and fell down at it. And for my part, I durst not laugh, for fear of opening my lips and receiving the bad air."-Julius Cæsar, i. 2 (1623). "If such foul smells be made by art and by the hand, they consist chiefly of man's flesh or sweat putrefied; for they are not those stinks which the nostrils straight abhor and expel, that are most pernicious. ... And these empoisonments of air are the more dangerous in meetings of people, because the much breath of people doth further the - Natreception of the infection." ural History (1622-25). 446 STARS ARE FIRES "The skies are painted with un number'd sparks; They are all fire." Julius Cæsar, iii. 1 (1623). "The stars are true fires.". Descriptio Globi Intellectualis (c. 1612). 447 GOLD, THE METAL MOST EASILY WROUGHT "Cassius [speaking to Brutus]. I see Thy honorable metal may be wrought From that it is disposed." Julius Caesar, i. 2 (1623). From Bacon "The most excellent metal, gold, is of all other the most pliant and most enduring to be wrought; so of all living and breathing substances the perfectest (man) is the most susceptible." — Helps for the Intellectual Powers (1596–1604). Dixon's Francis Bacon and his Shakespeare,' p. 173. 448 PROPHETIC DREAMS "Calpurnia, here, my wife, stays me at home; "I myself remember that, being in Paris, and my father dying in She dream'd to-night she saw my London, two or three days before "To speak truth of Cæsar, I have not known when his affec tions sway'd More than his reason." Nat "Affections behold merely the present; reason the future. Therefore, the present filling the imagination more, reason is commonly Julius Cæsar, ii. 1 (1623). vanquished; but after that force of eloquence and persuasion have made things future and remote appear as present, then upon the The author of the play had investigated the relative strength of the affections and the reasoning faculty. He then unto the ladder turns his generality, that it may find rest back, Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees By which he did ascend." Julius Cæsar, ii. 1 (1623). there; and so, after a little while, wearies of experiment." - Novum Organum (1620). Bacon called his philosophical method a ladder (Scala Intellectus), and declared that every sincere inquirer after truth must mount it, round by round, to the top and rest there. In no other way, as he taught, can one safely climb to a broad generalization. If, however, the searcher after truth should leap higher, or "unto the ladder turn his back," he will become "weary of experiment;" in other words, (Shake-speare's), he will 66 scorn the base degrees By which he did ascend." This leads to error. Brutus (or the author who created the character of Brutus) certainly understood the difference between 'Anticipation of Mind' and Interpretation of Nature,' as laid down in the Novum Organum. 451 CESAR WARNED BY AUGURERS From Shake-speare "Cæsar. What say the augurers? Servant. They would not have you to stir forth to-day. Plucking the entrails of an offering forth, They could not find a heart within the beast." Julius Cæsar, ii. 2 (1623). 452 From Bacon "The augur brought him word that the entrails were not favorable." De Augmentis (1622). DEATH, BEING INEVITABLE, MUST BE ENDURED "With meditating that she must die once, "I mourn not for that end which must be."- Essay of Death (post |