treated, and would have exhausted, had they not been as infinite as the soul itself. On many of these subjects-on the beau idéal, for example--it will be hardly too much to say that he has left nothing for future speculators.

Another peculiarity which we cannot forbear noticing, as forming one of the striking features of Bacon's intellectual character, is the circumstance that his writings will not be found in any high degree apophthegmatic: that is, the reader will not be likely to meet with many of those short, extractable, and easily remembered sentences, or gnomai, which pass from mouth to mouth as weighty maxims, or separate masses of truth-the gold coins, if we may so style them, of the intellectual exchange. Many such are undoubtedly to be found in his pages, but they are certainly less plentiful in Bacon than in other great writers; but we shall generally find these passages so embedded and fixed in the argument of which such propositions form a part, as not to be extracted without manifest loss to their value and significancy. In consequence of this, Bacon is one of those authors who must be read through to be correctly judged and worthily appreciated. Nor will any aspiring and truly generous mind begrudge the labour which will attend this exercise of the highest faculties with which God has endowed it; it is surely no mean privilege to be thus admitted into the laboratory and workshop of the new philosophy, and to behold-no indifferent spectatorthe sublime alchemy by which experience is transmuted into truth.

Among the minor works of the illustrious Chancellor it may not be improper to mention two or three of Minor works. the principal. We shall specify, first, a very

curious treatise On the Wisdom of the Ancients,' being an attempt to explain the classical mythology, by a system of moral and political interpretation, much less founded on probability than calculated to elevate, in our eyes, the degree of knowledge possessed by the pagan world. The following is the judgment, respecting this work, attributed to Balzac, from one of whose letters it is supposed to be a quotation: "Croyons donc, pour l'amour du Chancelier Bacon, que toutes les folies des anciens sont sages, et tous leurs songes

mystères; et de celles-là qui sont estimées pures fables, il n'y en a pas une, quelque bizarre et extravagante qu'elle soit, qui n'ait son fondement dans l'histoire, si l'on en veut croire Bacon, et qui n'ait été déguisée de la sorte par les sages du vieux temps, pour la rendre plus utile aux peuples." Another work is entitled the Felicities of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth; and a third is a production of greater importance, a "History of King Henry VII.,' written probably in a courtly desire to gratify King James, who was, as everybody knows, ambitious of the reputation of the pacific glories of a wise and tranquil administrator, and whose character in this respect would find a flattering parallel in the unwarlike reign of the politic Henry. Besides these, he is the author of a philosophical fiction entitled 'The New Atlantis.'

The glory of Bacon, as he himself had predicted, rose gradually but steadily on the literary horizon of Europe. It may however be complained (and this is not a circumstance to be wondered at) that his works were often rather vaguely eulogized than accurately studied: the profound nature of their subject, and the vastness of their design, were likely to have much limited the number of their readers; and in consequence many erroneous opinions became prevalent, not only respecting the true value of the Baconian revolution in science, but even respecting the nature of the system itself. It is unnecessary to say, that what the great philosopher gained in this way from vague and unintelligent praise he lost in true glory, which can only be founded on justice. It was reserved for various illustrious metaphysicians of the Scottish school "to turn," in Hallam's words, "that which had been a blind veneration into a rational worship." These profound and elegant writers, Reid, Stewart, Robison, and Playfair, by clothing the philosophy of Bacon in the language of the nineteenth century, have deprived it of whatever repulsive and difficult features it may have retained from its being written in a dead language, and from its somewhat complicated arrangement and subdivisions; while some of the greatest among modern experimental philosophers have been proud to draw, from the practical observations and more recent improvements of astronomy and other branches of physics, new

illustrations of the justness of Bacon's predictions, new conclusions clearing up obscure passages, and new proofs of the truth of his system. It is delightful to see experiment thus the willing handmaid of theory, and Herschel paying practical worship at the shrine of Bacon.

CHAPTER V.

ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH DRAMA.

Comparison between the Greek and Mediæval Dramas-Similarity of their Origin-Illusion in the Drama-Mysteries or Miracle-Plays— Their Subject and Construction-Moralities-The Vice-Interludes -The Four P.'s-First Regular Dramas- Comedies-TragediesEarly English Theatres-Scenery-Costume-State of the Dramatic Profession.

Comparison between the

Greek and

medieval

dramas.

THERE are very few æsthetic subjects upon which more controversy has been raised than upon the respective merits of various schools of the Drama: and certainly there are not many which have excited more critical asperity than the long-vexed question as to the comparative merits of the two great dramatic schools, to which Schlegel has assigned the not inapposite titles of Classical and Romantic. But both parties seem to have forgotten the similar origin and history of the two schools which they represent as so different, nay, even as so opposed; and to have pretty generally overlooked the important fact that the peculiarities of structure which respectively characterise the two classes of productions, so falsely considered as antagonistic, are really not essential or inherent, but arise from merely technical or superficial circumstances. Thus, for example, the Greek tragic drama was originally a religious ceremony, and, however modified, never entirely lost that sacred character. The personages of the Attic stage were almost always to a certain degree mythic: that is, they were almost invariably heroic; invested, either by antiquity, by the greatness of their exploits, or their immediate relations with the deities, with something of a religious character; and it is easily conceivable that, with such a people as the Greeks, the boundary-line between the god and the hero was not very distinctly traced: Theseus, for instance, was very little less a god than Hermes, and Apollo very little more divine

than Orestes; there were indeed many characters, frequently produced on the Athenian stage, who, like Hercules, obviously partook of the two qualities. Thus the Attic tragedy always retained a good deal of the historico-mythic character—a character which pervaded even the technical details of its construction, performance, and mise en scène.

Indiscriminate admiration, however, has discovered beauties in merely accidental and unimportant peculiarities, and has attempted to derive from the necessary laws of art rules which were founded upon circumstance or convenience. Thus, because the Greek theatres were of colossal dimensions, and consequently uncovered, enthusiastic critics have discovered beauty and grandeur in the contrivances employed to exaggerate the size of the actor and increase the sound of his voice: because their construction, and also the imperfection of the arts of mechanism, together also perhaps with some prejudices connected with the gravity and even sacredness of these spectacles, precluded them from changing the scene, attempts have been made to prove that the fixed scene-or unity of place—is an essential law of the dramatic art, and that consequently the modern plays are necessarily and demonstrably barbarous. It is exceedingly curious to observe with what ingenuity the socalled classical critics have defended the adherence to the Three Unities in dramatic composition. Their reasoning has all along been founded upon the supposition, that in the dramatic art the source of pleasure is to be found in illusion, and that consequently the preservation of the unities is necessary. Now, we will not maintain in this place the very false and low view of the true nature and object of art involved in this supposition; we will not show its fallacy when applied to painting, to music, to sculpture, or show that illusion-or rather delusion, a cheating of the senses—is never at all contemplated in works of any degree of excellence; we will not repeat the obvious fact that illusion, properly so called, never was and never can be attained, or even approximatively reached, in any dramatic work whatever, and that, even could it be attained, the result would be precisely subversive of the only conceivable end of the drama, viz. the production of pleasure.

We will go at once to the point, and say that this