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"And as there are certain hollow blasts of wind and secret swelling of seas before a tempest, so are there in states: "

"This lowering tempest of your home-bred hate." Act I. Sc. 3.

"Aum.

How brooks your grace the air,

After late tossing on the breaking seas?"-Act III. Sc. 2.

"For it is true that every vapour, or fume, doth not turn into a storm, so it is nevertheless true, that storms, though they blow over divers times, may come at last:"

"Scroop. Like an unseasonable stormy day,
Which makes the silver rivers drown their shores,
As if the world were all dissolv'd to tears,
So high above his limits swells the rage

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"Sal. Thy sun sets weeping in the lowly west, Witnessing storms to come, woe and unrest. "— Act II. Sc. 4.

"North. But lords, we hear this fearful tempest sing,

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Yet seek no shelter to avoid the storm.' Act II. Sc. 1.

"Ille etiam cæcos instare tumultus

Sæpe monet, fraudesque operta tumescere bella."— Essay xv.

"Were it, that before such great things, men's hearts of a secret instinct of nature misgive them; as the sea without wind swelleth of himself before a tempest."- Holinshed's History of Richard III., Vol. III., 379.

"3 Cit. Before the days of change, still is it so.

By a divine instinct men's minds mistrust

Ensuing danger; as by proof we see

The water swell before a boist'rous storm."

Richard III., Act II. Sc. 3.

"For when the authority of princes is made but an accessary to a cause, and that there be other bands that tie faster than the band of sovereignty, kings begin to be put almost out of possession:".

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"Queen. I will despair, and be at enmity With cozening hope: he is a flatterer,

A parasite, a keeper-back of death,

Who gently would dissolve the bands of life,

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While false hope lingers in extremity.". Act II. Sc. 2.
"Fits.

-there is my bond of faith

To tie thee to my strong correction." Act IV. Sc. 1.

"Certainly, the politic and artificial nourishing and entertainment of hopes, and carrying men from hopes to hopes, is one of the best antidotes against the poison of discontents; and it is a certain sign of a wise government and proceeding, when it can hold men's hearts by hopes, when it cannot by satisfaction; and when it can handle things in such manner as no evil shall appear so peremptory but that it hath some outlet of hope:'

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"K. Rich.

What comfort have we now?

By Heaven, I'll hate him everlastingly
That bids me be of comfort any more.
Go to Flint Castle; there I'll pine away;
A king, woe's slave, shall kingly woe obey.
That power I have, discharge; and let 'em go
To ear the land that hath some hope to grow,

For I have none."- Act III. Sc. 2.

"To give moderate liberty for griefs and discontentments to evaporate (so it be without too great insolency or bravery), is a safe way. For he that turneth the humors back, and maketh the wound bleed inwards endangereth malign ulcers and pernicious imposthumations:

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"K. Rich. For that our kingdom's earth should not be soil'd With that dear blood which it hath foster'd,

And for our eyes do hate the dire aspect

Of civil wounds plough'd up with neighbour's swords: "Act I. Sc. 3. "Aum. You holy clergymen, is there no plot

To rid the realm of this pernicious blot?"- Act IV. Sc. 1.

"Gaunt. And let thy blows, doubly redoubled,

Fall like amazing thunder on the casque

Of thy amaz'd pernicious enemy.”

- Act I. Sc. 3.

"This is the imposthume of much wealth and peace,

That inward breaks, and shews no cause without
Why the man dies."— Hamlet, Act IV. Sc. 4.

"I understand a fit head to be one that hath greatness and reputation: ". "Gaunt. Thy death-bed is no lesser than the land,

Wherein thou liest in reputation sick."— Act II. Sc. 1.

"Nor. The purest treasure mortal times afford

Is spotless reputation." Act I. Sc. 1.

"For I see sometimes the profounder sort of wits, in handling some particular argument, will now and then draw a bucket of water out of this well for their present use; but the spring-head thereof seemeth to me not to have been visited."- Adv. of Learning, II.

"Bol. That all the treasons for these eighteen years Complotted and contrived in this land,

Fetch'd from false Mowbray their first head and spring."

Act I. Sc. 1.

"K. Rich. Now is this golden crown like a deep well, That owes two buckets, filling one another;

The emptier ever dancing in the air,

The other down, unseen, and full of water:

That bucket down, and full of tears, am I,

Drinking my grief, whilst you mount up on high."

Act IV. Sc. 1.

"Surely princes had need in tender matters and ticklish times to beware what they say, especially in these short speeches, which fly abroad like darts, and are thought to be shot out of their secret intentions: ".

"K. Rich. And darts his light through every guilty hole."

Act III. Sc. 2.

"York. While all tongues cried, 'God save thee, Bolingbroke!' You would have thought the very windows spake,

So many greedy looks of young and old

Through casements darted their desiring eyes

Upon his visage." Act V. Sc. 2.

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"Such men in other men's calamities, are, as it were, in season, and ever on the loading part; not so good as the dogs that licked Lazarus' sores, but like flies that are still buzzing upon everything that is raw."-Essay, xiii.

"K. Rich. O, villains, vipers, damn'd without redemption! Dogs, easily won to fawn on any man!". Act III. Sc. 2.

These passages may be left to speak for themselves. It is also worthy of notice that the word instrument is much used by both Bacon and Shakespeare, in a metaphorical way, and peculiarly in the Latin sense of Tacitus; as for instance, we have, in Tacitus, "mathematicos,.. . pessimum Principalis matrimonii instrumentum," and "ut haberet instrumenta servitutis et Reges," and "sed sola instrumenta vitiorum"; and in the plays, "the instruments of darkness," "the mortal instruments," "a serving man and instrument," and "that hath to instrument this lower world"; and, in Bacon, "the wicked instruments only of other men's malice," and "the actors and instruments," "the organs and instruments," ,” “the fittest instrument to do good to the state," and "practised by subtile instruments to draw them on,” and "but as a divine instrument, though a mortal man." And the favorite metaphor of both Bacon and the plays, derived from instruments of music and the tuning of instruments, appears in the Advancement, thus:—

"Being at some pause looking back into that I have passed through, this writing seemeth to me, 'si numquam fallit imago,' as far as a man can judge of his own work, not much better than the noise, or sound, which musicians make, while they are tuning their instruments, which is nothing pleasant to hear, but yet is a cause why the music is sweeter afterwards: so have I been content to tune the instruments of the muses, that they may play that have better hands:"

"His tongue is now a stringless instrument." - Rich. II.

It is true, the author of this play, in the historical part, very closely followed the history of Holinshed; as for one instance, in Holinshed, the Earl of Arundel, turning to Sir John Bushie, says, "not the King's faithful commons require this, but thou, and what thou art I know"; and in the "Richard II.," it appears thus:

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"Norf. No Bolingbroke: if ever I were traitor,

My name be blotted from the Book of Life,

And I from Heaven banish'd, as from hence!

But what thou art, God, thou, and I do know." — Act I. Sc. 3.

So Holinshed speaks of Richard lamenting his miserable state, "when now it was too late:"

"One day too late, I fear, my noble lord,

Hath clouded all thy happy days on Earth."— Act III. Sc. 2. But the parallel ideas, expressions, and allusions in these writings of Bacon, as well as that particular allusion to the Salic law, in the Apothegms, in reference to which the speech in the "Henry V." is almost literally versified out of Holinshed, with a like allusion to the book of Numbers and to the French gloss as in the Apothegms, not to mention many other similar instances, would seem to furnish pretty satisfactory evidence that Holinshed was transferred to the play, through the mind of Francis Bacon and not of William Shakespeare. Indeed, the critical reader, who shall diligently compare the entire play with the writings of Bacon and Tacitus, can scarcely fail to discover translations and similitudes enough, not only to justify the expectation of traces in it of the "sentences and conceits of Cornelius Tacitus," but to convince him of the fact, that they passed into the play through the limbec of Bacon's brain.

§ 2. THE HENRY VIII.

The tragedy of Henry VIII. has been supposed by some critics to have been written as early as the year 1602, but there is no evidence concerning it, nor any certain trace of its existence, before it was produced in great splendor at the Globe Theatre, on the 30th of June, 1613, when the theatre took fire, during the performance, and was burned down. Ben Jonson appears to have taken an active part in bringing out the play; and some have entertained the opinion, on internal evidence merely, that the prologue and the lines in compliment to King James were written by him and added to the old play, at this time. But there is no good ground for this supposition: on the contrary, it is far more probable that the play was entirely a new one, as Mr. White believes, and that the speech of Cranmer in praise of Elizabeth and James, as well as the scenes in which Anne Bullen, the mother of Elizabeth, is introduced in terms of high commendation, was intended to be a special compliment to the King. It was never entered, nor printed, until it appeared in the Folio of 1623. It is true, however, that, in the year 1602, the kingdom was agitated on the subject of abuses of the King's prerogative in the matter of taxes, and that there were loud complaints of oppressive exactions. The subject was debated in Parliament, and a petition of grievances was sent up to the King by the Commons. Bacon presented it, and made his speech to the King touching purveyors; in which allusion is made to the fact, that similar grievances had existed in the reign of Henry VIII., who had made "some laws or law against this kind of offenders." And in this play, the author makes Queen Katherine present to King Henry a like petition of grievances. A comparison of this speech with the second scene of the first act will scarcely leave room for doubt in the mind of the critical reader, that both proceeded from the same pen. Observe these passages, in particular :

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