In the second edition of the Advancement' (De Augmentis, 1622) Bacon adds the following, to the sentence quoted above: "An image strikes the memory more forcibly and is more easily impressed upon it than an object of the intellect; insomuch that even brutes have their memory excited by sensible impressions, never by intellectual ones. And therefore you will more easily remember the image of a hunter pursuing a hare, of an apothecary arranging his boxes, of a pedant making a speech, of a boy repeating verses from memory, of a player acting on a stage, than the mere notions of invention, disposition, elocution, memory, and action. . . . So much, therefore, for the art of retaining or keeping knowledge." It is difficult to believe that when Prospero begged his daughter to give him the image of anything she might have retained in her memory of the time of their arrival on the island, the author did not have in mind the philosophical thesis on the art of memory that had been composed by Bacon ten or twelve years earlier. 91 CASTOR AND POLLUX 1 "To point" means in every particular. From Bacon "The ball of fire, called Castor by the ancients, that appears at sea, if it be single, prognosticates a severe storm (seeing it is Castor, the dead brother), which will be much more severe if the ball does not adhere to the mast, but rolls and dances about. But if there be two of them (that is, if Pollux, the living brother, be present), and that, too, when the storm has increased, it is reckoned a good sign. The yards and bowsprit, would I Tempest, i. 2 (1623). But if there are three of them (that is, if Helen, the general scourge, arrive), the storm will become more fearful. The fact seems to be, that one by itself seems to indicate that the tempestuous matter is crude; two, that it is prepared and ripened; three or more, that so great a quantity is collected as can hardly be dispersed."- History of the Winds (1622). Prospero's commission to Ariel to raise a storm at sea and wreck Antonio's ship illustrates the object for which the play was written; namely, to show man's destined command over the powers of nature. This was the professed object, too, of Bacon's system of philosophy; all his studies had been directed from his youth to that end. Accordingly, we are not surprised to find in Bacon's prose works the preliminary details of such a wreck, as well as the source from which they were chiefly derived. We quote from Pliny's Natural History,' translated into English for the first time in 1601, as follows: "They settle also upon the yards and other parts of the ship, as men do sail the sea, making a kind of vocal sound, leaping to and fro, and shifting their places as birds do which fly from bough to bough. Dangerous they be and unlucky when they come one by one without a companion; and they drown those ships on which they alight and threaten shipwreck; yea, and they set them on fire, if haply they fall upon the bottom of the keel. But if they appear two and two together, they bring comfort with them, and foretell a prosperous course in the voyage, by whose coming, they say, that dreadful, cursed and threatening meteor, Helena, is chased and driven away. And therefore it is that men assign this mighty power to Castor and Pollux and invocate them at sea, no less than gods." It will be seen that, according to Pliny, it was a single ball of fire that struck terror to the hearts of the mariners; but in Bacon's version, while one alone signified danger, the really fatal omen, such as Ariel sought to create, lay in the appearance of three or more balls of fire together. That is to say, Bacon made a certain deviation from the classical story, and in this was duly followed by the author of the play; for in the lines the word distinctly, used to qualify the kind of apparition produced by Ariel on the ship, means separately, or severally, that is, in three or more places at once. Hakluyt described these lights, as he called them, in 1600, but apparently without any knowledge of their alleged character as portents. Mr. Main, in his Treasury of English Sonnets,' was the first to notice this threefold parallelism of 'region, rack, and silence' in the foregoing descriptions of a storm. My chamber-councils, wherein, hopes, suspicions, counsels, and priest-like, thou Hast cleans'd my bosom." Winter's Tale, i. 2 (1623). whatsoever lieth upon the heart to oppress it, in a kind of civil shrift or confession." Essay of Friendship (1625). The first draft of the Essay was made sometime between 1607 and 1612. Both authors confer upon friendship the functions of a religious confessional. For an elucidation of this extraordinary parallelism, see Francis Bacon Our Shake-speare,' p. 45. 95 BROWNISTS "Sir Andrew Toby. Policy I hate; I had as lief be a Brownist as a politician." Twelfth Night, iii. 2 (1623). "As for those we call Brownists, being when they were at the most, a very small number of very silly and base people, here and there The Brownists (so called from Robert Brown, their leader) were a religious sect that objected to the rites, ceremonies, and discipline of the English Church. They were the forerunners of the Puritans. Bacon and Shake-speare, it is unpleasant to note, both expressed the utmost contempt for them. This parallelism was suggested to us by a respected correspondent in Basel, Switzerland. |