problem for years, and he, probably, has not wasted so much time over it (he comments inwardly). So be it. Posterity must judge, whether I am right and whether these Plays are not the examples of Bacon's inductive system, to be interpreted by the aid of his great commentary—the Sylva Sylvarum!

CHAPTER V.

THE COMEDY OF ERRORS.

"It decideth also the controversies between Zeno and Socrates, and their schools and successions on the one side, who placed felicity in virtue simply or attended, the actions and exercises whereof do chiefly embrace and concern society; and on the other side the Cirenaics and Epicuræans, who placed it in pleasure and made virtue (as it is used in some COMEDIES OF ERRORS, wherein the mistress and the maid change habits) to be but as a servant, without which pleasure cannot be served and attended." (Advancement of Learning, 1605, book ii. p. 74.)

The object of this chapter is to briefly point out how Bacon, in the Comedy of Errors, has symbolized the workings of the Will and Understanding, in accordance with the emblems of Bacchus, the vine,- typical of passion and vice, and in harmony with his text of the De Augmentis, concerning ethic and logic, and also in parallel context with his fable of the Syrens or Pleasures. This history of the soul is, in my opinion, entirely borrowed from the classical Mysteries known as the Bacchic and Eleusinian. Bacon wrote his collection of the Wisdom of the Ancients with direct reference to the plays. The fact that almost every piece of the collection is in close connection with the origin of the Greek drama, through the Mysteries, is a significant fact in itself. His object, I submit, was to restore the ancient, classical, philosophical and religious origins of the drama, connected with agriculture, through a system of inductive logic applied symbolically, and finding its reflection in his prose writings, as ethic.

One object Bacon had in this play, I maintain, was to reduce ACTION (which he identifies with Bacchus as passion, affections and appetites), to logic and understanding. He, therefore, takes the chief emblem of Bacchus, the vine (which stood with the ancients as the emblem of vice or passion, when unpruned or undressed), to illustrate the workings of "unbridled will," as the cause of error in the understanding. One text of the Comedy of Errors is, I believe, this passage:

Adriana. Thou art an elm, my husband, 1 a vine,
Whose weakness married to thy stronger state
Makes me with thy strength to communicate:

If ought possess thee from me it is dross,
Usurping ivy, briar or idle moss,
Who, all for want of pruning, with intrusion,
Infect thy sap, and live on thy confusion.

Bacon writes:

(Act ii. 2, Comedy of Errors.)

"The third example of philosophy, according to ancient parables in morality. Of passion, according to the fable of Dionysus." (p. 126, lib. 2, Advancement of Learning, 1640.) "He invented the planting and dressing of vines; the making and use of wine." (Ib. p. 126.) "The inventing of the vine is a wise parable, for every affection is very quick and witty in finding out that which nourisheth and cherisheth it; and of all things known to men, wine is most powerful and efficacious to excite and inflame passions; of what kind soever; as being in a sort a common incentive to them all." (Ib. p. 128.)

Now, the vine was always trained upon the elm in Italy, which the author of the passage quoted well knew. Virgil's first Georgic, dedicated to Bacchus and Ceres, opens almost with the words:

Ulmisque adjungere Vitis conveniat (line 2.)

The term married trees was a classical expression, used generally with direct reference to the vine and elm:

"Aut si forte eadem est ulmo conjuncta marito."

(Catullus de Vite.)

"Nec melius teneris junguntur vitibus ulmi." (Martial, lib. iv.) "At si tenerum ulmum maritaveris novam sufferet;

Si vetustam vitem applicaveris, conjugem necabit; ita
Sibi pares esse ætate et viribus arbores, vitesque convenit."

(Columella, lib. v., cap. v.)

"Stratus humi palmes viduas desiderat ulmos." (Juvenal, sat. 8.) All this was well know to Bacon. He writes:

"And in France the grapes that make the wine, grow upon the low vines bound to small stakes. It is true that in Italy and other countries, where they have hotter sun, they raise them upon elms." (Ex. p. 432, Sylva Sylvarum.)

In the Mysteries of Bacchus, the vine being his chief emblem (thus a type for wine and the passions excited by it), the pruning and dressing of the vine, became a metaphor, morally applied to selfrestraint and to vice. The Latin word vitium, or vice, was derived, (as I already have remarked,) from vitis, a vine. In a passage already cited from Cicero, it may be seen he employs the pruning of

the vine to illustrate ethic or morality. Adriana exclaims in context with her metaphor of the vine :

Thou art an elm, my husband, I a vine,

Who, all for want of pruning, with intrusion,
Infect thy sap and live on thy confusion.

Passions confuse and illaqueate the understanding, and are one of the great causes of error, a theme Bacon is never tired of inculcating in his Instauration. The mind is macerated in the affections, and prejudges, not according to what is true, but to what it rather likes.

At the commencement of the fifth book of the De Augmentis, Bacon writes: "The Will of man and the Understanding of man are TWINS by birth." It may be noticed the Antipholi and their servants, the two Dromios, (of Syracuse and Ephesus,) are twins. Bacon writes again: "That the mind hath over the body that commandment which the Lord hath over a bond-man," (Ib. book v. 218.) Both the servants of the two Antipholus' are slaves or bondsmen. In the two books of the Advancement of Learning, 1605, Bacon writes: "The knowledge which respecteth the faculties of the mind of man is of two sorts: the one respecting the Understanding and Reason, and the other his will, appetites and affections. Quales decet esse sororum (whom it behooves to be sisters)." (Book ii.) Now Adriana and Luciana are not only two sisters, but are drawn in direct contrast to each other, as revolt of will and submission of will, evidently with an ethical purpose in each delineation. In discussing duty to husbands Luciana exclaims:

Luciana. O, know he is the bridle of your will.
Adriana. There's none but asses will be bridled so.

(Act i. 2.)

This is another text illustrating the play, pointing out the unpruned vine is revolted will, which, fastening upon Antipholus of Syracuse, will transform him into the ass Adriana satirises. Directly on the heels of the passage on the vine already cited:

Dromio S. I am transformed, master, am I not?

Ant. S. I think thou art in mind, and so am I.

Dromio S. Nay, master, both in my mind and in my shape.
Ant. S. Thou hast thine own form.

Dromio S.

No, I am an ape.

Luciana. If thou art changed to aught, 'tis to an ass.

Dromio S. 'Tis true; she rides me and I long for grass.

'Tis so, I am an ass; else it could never be

But I should know her as well as she knows me.

(Act ii. 2.)

"Apelles drew a picture of the life of man and the abuse of drunkenness. In the first place, he painted a garden with a very pleasant arbor in it, which was embellished with herbs and flowers of all sorts. At the entrance to this garden there stood a great gate on the right hand, the way and passage whereof was very delightful and much frequented. On the other side there was another little door, very straight and narrow, to pass in and out of, which had a sharp and difficult way thereto, all covered with bushes, brambles and thorns, and that way seemed very little frequented. Before the first gate, there were goodly tents erected, and before them stood tables, loaded with viands and goodly things. At the entrance of an arbor sat a woman in garments like a queen, with a crown of young vine upon her head, and she was intoxicated. She was attended by three waiting-maids who were respectively called Folly, Madness and Luxury. This company were guarded and environed (as by hedges and bushes), with bears, bulls, goats, great asses, horses and apes, and all other kinds of beasts, that (of living men) had been metamorphosed into such monsters, after they had drunk of the wine from the hand of the lady, out of a cup which one of her handmaids called slothfulness. When they entered first to her they were all men, and so continued (for some time) in their human shape, but when they had thoroughly tasted of her drink, they lost their true forms and were transformed into beasts." (The Treasury of Ancient and Modern Times, book vi. ch. xxvi. Translated out of the Spanish of Pedro Mexio and Francesco Sansovino. Iaggard, 1613, London.)

Socrates, in Plato's Phado, writes:

"For instance, those who have given themselves up to gluttony, wantonness and drinking, and have put no restraint on themselves, will probably be clothed in the forms of asses and brutes of that kind." (p. 85, Bohn's edition, Plato Cary vol. i.)

It may be actually perceived the passage quoted gives these three animals. Dromio of Syracuse compares himself to the horse, ape and ass. Archbishop Warburton, in his Divine Legation of Moses, points out that the transformation of Apuleius into an ass, (pictured in his fable of the Golden Ass), represents that he had been living a vicious and bestial life, and that Apuleius only regained his proper shape by initiation into the Mysteries. It may be noticed, the passage cited, recalls the transformation of Bottom into an ass, in the Dream. Very remarkable it is to find, the other plant sacred to