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. dispersed, they are now (thanks be to God), by the good remedies that have been used, suppressed and worn out." Observations on a Libel (1592). 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. In the first draft of 'The Taming of the Shrew,' published under the title of 'The Taming of a Shrew' in 1594, the term choleric in this scene is applied to mustard only; but in the final draft (1623), made while Bacon was writing his 'Natural History' and investigating the effects of different kinds of food upon the stomach, it is used (as in the latter work) in connection with fat meats. The reference to mustard is still retained, but in a wholly subordinate way. Bacon, discussing the virtues of inanimate things, mentions the bloodstone, which was once thought to be "good for bleeding at the nose." It is in this same sense that is, as a "precious jewel" that he treats of the stone said to be found in a toad's head. 103 BASE KNOWLEDGE "Berowne. By Jove, I always took three threes for nine. Costard. O Lord, sir, it were pity you should get your living by reckoning, sir."— Love's Labor's Lost, v. 2 (1598). "Sir' (saith a man of art to Philip, king of Macedon, when he controlled him in his faculty), 'God forbid your fortune should be such as to know these things better than I.'"- Valerius Ter minus. The Valerius Terminus is one of the very earliest of Bacon's philosophical writings, the exact date being unknown. The anecdote in it respecting Philip was repeated twenty or thirty years later in the De Augmentis, where a knowledge of the musical art, like that of the multiplication table, is assumed to be beneath royal dignity. DEATH, AN ARREST WITHOUT BAIL “He should be close enough [in prison], and Death should be his Charge against Somerset "This fell sergeant, death, Is strict in his arrest." Hamlet, v. 2 (1604). bail." "That fell arrest Without all bail shall carry me away." Sonnet 74 (1609). Here is the same legal imagery used in different ways for different purposes. Overbury was arrested and imprisoned under such conditions that death was his only bail; the author of the sonnet anticipates his own arrest by death without bail. |