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And make her full of hateful fan

tasies."

Midsummer-Night's Dream, ii. 1 (1600).

"Puck. If we shadows have of-
fended,

Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber'd here,
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme
No more yielding than a dream."

Ibid., v. 1.

'A Midsummer-Night's Dream' is a play founded on natural magic, with Oberon and Puck, or Robin Goodfellow, as prominent dramatis persona. These names and the characters they represent were taken from romances, written by Hugh or Huon of Bordeaux, with which Bacon was familiar. He refers to them in the Advancement of Learning' when treating of magic:

"As for that natural magic whereof now there is mention in books, containing certain credulous and superstitious conceits and observations of Sympathies and Antipathies, and hidden proprieties [properties], and some frivolous experiments, strange rather by disguisement than in themselves, it is as far differing in truth of nature from such a knowledge as we require, as the story of King Arthur of Britain, or Hugh of Bordeaux, differs from Cæsar's Commentaries." Book ii. (1605).

The play illustrates precisely such effects of magic as Bacon describes, sympathy and antipathy at the will of magicians. Lysander and Hermia, for instance, are introduced to us in the first act as in love with each other and about to marry; but while Lysander is lying asleep by the side of his prospective bride, Puck makes his appearance and lets fall into his eyes some drops of a liquid that at once turns his love into hate. The same kind of enchantment causes him to fall in love with Helena. That is to say, his

affections, like those of Demetrius and Titania, are controlled by the "hidden (or magical) properties" of a flower while he is asleep.

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Bacon was very fond of apothegms, as he was also of proverbs. He refers to them as useful productions in the first edition of his 'Advancement of Learning' in 1605, and still more forcibly in the Latin edition of the same work

published in 1623. It is not difficult to understand why both apothegms and proverbs are found, credited to clowns and fools, in Shake-speare: they illustrate Bacon's favorite method of imparting philosophy without contention. "In the reflections of Falstaff," says Mr. Hudson, "we have a clear, though brief, view of the profound philosopher underlying the profligate humorist and make-sport; for [the author] there discovers a breadth and sharpness of observation and a depth of practical sagacity such as might have placed him in the front rank of statesmen and sages."-SHAKESPEARE'S Art and Life, ii. 94.

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"Canst thou not minister to a "The particular remedies which mind diseased ?" learning doth minister to all the Macbeth, v. 3 (1623). diseases of the mind."- Advancement of Learning, Book i. (1603-5).

"Good lord, Madam, said I, how wisely and aptly can you speak and discern of physic ministered to the body, and consider not that there is the like occasion of physic ministered to the mind."- Apology concerning the Earl of Essex (1603).

"We know diseases of stoppings and suffocations are the most dangerous in the body; and it is not much otherwise in the mind.". Essay of Friendship (1625).

154

ADDRESS IN COURT

From Shake-speare

"Most potent, grave, and reverend signiors!"

From Bacon

"I speak not to simple men, but to prudent, grave, and wise peers." Othello, i. 3 (1622). Speech at the Trial of Essex (1601).

On this parallelism Mr. Gerald Massey comments as follows:

"Shakespeare himself gives us a hint, in his dramatic way, that he was present at the trial of the Earl, for he has, in a well-known speech of Othello's, adopted the manner and almost the words with which Bacon opened his address on that memorable occasion." The Secret Drama of Shakespeare's Sonnets, p. 216.

155

LUST

"The expense of spirit in a waste of shame

Is lust in action; and till action, lust

"Lust never rests satisfied with what it has, but goes on and on, with infinite insatiable appetite, panting after new triumphs. Tigers

Is perjur'd, murderous, bloody, full also are kept in its stalls and yoked

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Mr. George James, a ripe scholar and critic of Birmingham, England, calls attention to the identity of thought regarding the operations of Rumor (evidently inspired by Virgil) in Bacon's Essay of 'Seditions and Troubles' and the Induction to 2 Henry IV. The passages he refers to are as follows:

"Rumor. I, from the orient to the

drooping west,

"Libels and licentious discourses against the state, when they are

Making the wind my post-horse, frequent and open, and in like sort,

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