Both authors in early life held to the doctrine of atoms, a system which, on the assumption that atoms are endowed with gravity and motion, accounts for the origin of all other things. The one says that these seeds lay "intreasured" in the beginning, and became the "hatch and brood of time;" the other, that they are of a "dark and hidden nature," and out of them the "worlds were constituted and fashioned."

The De Principiis atque Originibus, from which we have quoted, is one of Bacon's earliest philosophical tracts, its exact date unknown.

Servant. The English force, so

please you.

Macbeth. Take thy face hence."

Ibid., v. 3.

The play of Macbeth' is crowded with proofs, as shown by Mr. Ruggles in his 'Method of Shakespeare as an Artist' (1870), that the dramatist had made (as we have already said) a painstaking study of physiognomy. It was on the sudden entrance of the murderers into the presence of Lady Macduff that she asks in terror, "What are these faces?" So Macbeth himself, when the approach of the English forces is announced to him, dwells on the signs of fear in the face of the messenger.

The results of Bacon's study of this subject were given to the world in the first edition of 'The Advancement of Learning,' in 1605, simultaneously with the production of 'Macbeth.' Our quotation above is taken from its second edition (in which the subject is still more elaborately discussed), contemporaneous with the first publication of the play.

So mortal, that but dip a knife in prefer a witch or mountebank to a

it,

learned physician."- Advancement

Where it drops blood, no cataplasm of Learning (1603-5).

I rather will suspect the sun with give a passport to faith." - Essay

cold

Than thee with wantonness; now

doth thy honor stand,

In him that was of late an heretic,

As firm as faith."

The Merry Wives of Windsor, iv.

4 (1623).

of Suspicion (1625).

In the quarto editions of The Merry Wives of Windsor' of 1602 and 1619 (the latter published three years after the death of William Shakspere of Stratford) the renunciation of suspicion for the future, declared by Bacon to be under such circumstances in accordance with human nature, is made in these words:

"Ford. Well, wife, here take my hand; upon my soul, I love thee dearer than I do my life, and joy I have so true and constant wife. My jealousy shall never more offend thee."

The witches took full possession of Lady Macbeth's mind, but only in the manner described by Bacon, through the intermediate agency of her husband, who had interviewed them.

Nature's soft nurse, how have I who, being at the highest, want

frighted thee,

That thou no more wilt weigh my

eyelids down

matter of desire, which makes their minds more languishing; and have many representations of perils and

And steep my senses in forgetful- shadows, which makes their minds

WIVES MURDERING THEIR HUSBANDS

"For God's sake, let us sit upon

the ground

66

Kings have to deal with their neighbors, their wives, their chil

And tell sad stories of the death of dren, their prelates or clergy, their

kings;

How some have been depos'd, some

slain in war,

nobles, their second-nobles or gentlemen, their merchants, their commons, and their men of war;

Some haunted by the ghosts they and from all these arise dan

have depos'd,

Some poison'd by their wives, some sleeping kill'd,

gers....

"For their wives: there are cruel examples of them. Livia is in