CHAPTER IV. PAN, DIONYSUS OR BACCHUS, AND PERSEUS (BACON'S THREE FABLES ILLUSTRATING PARABOLICAL POESY AND STAGE PLAYS IN THE “DE AUGMENTIS”). Silenus-old drunken Silenus On his ass, with his paunch full of wine, With their shouts the light air, And Bacchus, led slow on a leopard, The fact Bacon introduces, in context with the subject of stage plays and parabolical poesy, in his De Augmentis (book ii.), the fables of Pan and Dionysus (or Bacchus) ought to constitute a sufficiently profound hint for the theatre, if properly understood at all. Dionysus or Bacchus was god of comedy and tragedy, in short, he was the classical protagonist of the drama, and Pan always followed in his train. Let me quote Lucian on this point: The "Bacchus, the general of this spruce band, had ram's horns, a circlet of vine leaves and grapes round his temples, and the hair plaited in tresse's like a woman's coiffure, and rode in a car drawn by leopards. Under him were two other commanders, one a short, thick, old, shriveled fellow, with a pendulous paunch, a flat, apish nose, and long pointed ears, mounted generally on an ass. other, a most grotesque figure, his lower half resembling a goat, with shaggy haired thighs, a long goat's beard, just the same horns, and of a very warm temperament. In one hand he held a pipe of reeds, in the other a crooked stick; and so he hopped and frisked and skipped about in great leaps among the whole troop, and frightened the women, who, at the sight of him, ran up and down with disheveled hair, crying, 'Evohë, Evohë,' which, I suppose, was the name of their commander-in-chief." (pp. 781-782, vol. i. Lucian's Works, translated by Wm. Tooke, 1820.) These three are, of course, Bacchus, Silenus Lucian presently designates by their real names. was part of the equipage of Bacchus or Dionysus. and Pan, who Pan, in short, I think, to the reflective student, the fact Bacon introduces the fables of Pan, Perseus and Dionysus altogether in his De Augmentis, as examples of parabolical poetry, on the direct heels of his description of Stage PLAYS (p. 107), is a tremendous and overpowering finger-post for the THEATRE. PAN. Pan was called by the Arcadians the LORD of Matter (tov τNS vληs иvριov, Macrob. Sat. 1, c. 22); which title is expressed in the Latin name Sylvanus, SYLVA, and vλŋ being the same word, written according to the different modes of pronouncing different dialects. In a choral ode of Sophocles, he is addressed by the title of author and director of the dances of the gods, as being the author and disposer of the regular motion of the universe. According to Pindar, this Arcadian Pan was the associate or husband of Rhea, or Matter (Schol. in Pind. Pyth. iii. 138). It was his music of the Syrinx or seven reeded pipe, which, like Orpheus' harp, ordered everything harmoniously. Pan was the principle of universal creative order, and the Cnossian dances sacred to Jupiter, and the Nyssian to Bacchus, were under the direction of Pan. (Payne Knight's Symbolical Language of Ancient Art and Mythology, 186, 187.) Macrobius describes him: "Universæ substantiæ materialis dominatorem significari volentes. Cujus materiæ vis universorum corporum, seu illa divina seu terrena sint, componit essentiam.” (p. 214 Saturnalia, lib. i.) We may guess one of Bacon's objects in introducing him, in context, or sequence, to stage plays and parabolical poetry. For he was the minister and companion of Bacchus or Dionysus, the god of tragic art and protector of theatres, whom Bacon introduces on the heels of this fable of Pan, in his De Augmentis. Sacrifices were offered to him in common with Dionysus. He instructed Daphnis in the use of the Syrinx (Virgil Eclog. i. 32, iv. 58). The student may well note here that one of Lord Bacon's Deficients of a new world of sciences, in his De Augmentis, is entitled VENATIO PANIS, the hunting of Pan, or LITERATE EXPERIENCE, and is allied to his inductive method and has nothing to do with nature, but only literature. The hints Bacon gives us in his De Augmentis for the theatre and plays are so frequent and pointed, that it seems, indeed, as if nothing but willful blindness, or prejudiced stupidity, prevented our seizing them. For example, at the termination of the fable of Dionysus (the protagonist of the classical drama, please mark,) Bacon writes: "Lastly, that confusion of the persons of Jupiter and Bacchus may be well transferred to a parable; seeing noble and famous acts, and remarkable and glorious merits do sometimes proceed from virtue and well-ordered reason and magnanimity, and sometimes from a hidden affection and a hidden passion; howsoever both the one and the other so affect the renown of fame and glory, that a man can hardly distinguish between the acts of Bacchus and the gests of Jupiter. "But we stay too long in the theatre; let us now pass on to the palace of the mind." (p. 130, book ii., Advancement of Learning, 1640.) By gests (gesta) Bacon undoubtedly hints at plays. Is it not somewhat remarkable to find, the first tidings of the earliest acting of the supposed Shakespeare plays, connected with Gray's Inn and reprinted in 1688 under the title of Gesta Grayorum? "In 1594," writes Hallewell Phillips, "there were rare doings at Gray's Inn in the Christmas holidays of 1594." Bacon, moreover, in writing of the Acts of Bacchus, is undoubtedly alluding to Action and the Theatre. For tragedy and comedy arise out of the acts of Bacchus; that is, out of the action of the affections, passions and appetites (with each other), of which latter he was the representative. Bacchus is an emblem of passionate life, of which the vine, or wine, its juice, is the emblem. Noise, riot, joy, laughter, all follow in his train, and it may be well noticed Bacon has evidently drawn a subtle distinction between the characters of Bacchus and Jupiter. Bacon gives us in his Wisdom of the Ancients, a sketch of this Dionysus, or Bacchus, with explanations. Now, I think there is sufficient in this fable of Bacon's, alone to prove he clearly apprehended the ethical character of the meaning attached to Bacchus, as lying at the bottom of tragedy and comedy; that is, as the action of passion and affections against each other. He writes: "This fable seems to contain a little system of morality, so that there is scarce any better invention in all ethics. Under the history of Bacchus is drawn the nature of unlawful desire or affection and disorder; for the appetite and thirst of apparent good is the mother of all unlawful desire, though ever so destructive; and all unlawful desires are conceived in unlawful wishes or requests, rashly indulged or granted before they are well understood or considered" (Wisdom of the Ancients, XXIV.) Now, mark Bacon in his seventh book (treating of Morality or Ethic) of De Augmentis declares the poets and historians to be the best doctors of this knowledge, that is, of Ethic. Bacchus from the citation, is clearly apprehended as "apparent good," that is, pleasure of the body, and of the moment, ungoverned by judgment or understanding. Bacon evidently intends to imply that it is the yielding to Bacchus, as the temptation of the moment (the good of the senses), which is the mother of all unlawful desire. These two are, then, "Reason and Will," which elsewhere he says, turn faces." (p. 218, Lib. v., Advancement of Learning.) Bacon continues: 66 "That Bacchus should be the inventor of wine, carries a fine allegory with it; for every affection is cunning and subtle in discovering a proper matter to nourish and feed it; and of all things known to mortals, wine is the most powerful and effectual for exciting and inflaming passions of all kinds, and being indeed like a common fuel to all." (Ib.) Of the Ivy, he writes: "Nor is it without a mystery that the ivy was sacred to Bacchus, and this is for two reasons: first, because ivy is an evergreen, or flourishes in the winter; and, secondly, because it winds and creeps about so many things, as trees, walls, and raises itself above them. As to the first, every passion grows fresh, strong and vigorous by opposition and prohibition, as it were, by a kind of contrast or antiperistasis, like the ivy in winter; and for the second, the predominant passion of the mind throws itself, like the ivy, round all human actions, entwines all our resolutions and perpetually adheres to, and mixes itself among, or even overtops them." (Ib.) These two similes find their exact parallels in the plays; in the Comedy of Errors we find Adriana exclaiming : Thou art an elm, my husband, I a vine, (Act ii. sc. 2.) Vines were always trained in Italy upon elm trees. In the Midsummer Night's Dream, we read of Bottom : Titania. Sleep, thou, and I will wind thee in my arms. Fairies be gone, and be always away. So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle Gently entwist; the female ivy so (Act iv. sc. 1.) The Latin word for vice was vitium, borrowed from vitis, the vine, from the emblem of wine and its parasitical effect upon the soul and body, that is a symbol of passion. Adriana is pictured as unbridled will in direct contrast to her sister Luciana. We shall see, how Bacon has worked out the Comedy of Errors, in harmony with his fable of the "Syrens or pleasures," in our next chapter. Symbols borrowed from vine dressing and agriculture, were applied ethically in the Mysteries, as we may gather from Cicero: "Those things, too, which the earth produces have a sort of gradual growth toward perfection, not very unlike what we see in animals. Therefore we say that a vine lives, and dies; we speak of a tree as young, or old; being in its prime, or growing old. And it is therefore not inconsistent to speak, as in the case of animals, of some things in plants, too, being conformable to nature, and some not; and to say that there is a certain cultivation of them, nourishing, and causing them to grow, which is the science and art of the farmer, which prunes them, cuts them in, raises them, trains them, props them, so that they may be able to extend themselves in the direction which nature points out; in such a manner that the vines themselves, if they could speak, would confess that they ought to be managed and protected in the way they are. And now indeed that which protects it (that I may continue to speak chiefly of the vine) is external to the vine: for it has but very little power in itself to keep itself in the best possible condition, unless cultivation is applied to it. But if sense were added to the vine, so that it could feel desire and be moved by itself, what do you think it would do? Would it do those things which were formerly done to it by the vine-dresser, and of itself attend to itself? (Chief Good and Evil.) The student may perceive Cicero is hinting at the culture of self, and pruning of vices, which he applies by the simile of vine-dressing. Cicero had been initiated in the Mysteries, and it is highly probable this metaphor, which he introduces again and again, was borrowed from what he had gathered in the rites, which, mark, were Bacchic, that is the tutelary deities were Ceres and Bacchus, the goddess and god of Agriculture. Indeed the Georgics of Virgil which treat of the dressing of the vine, the tillage of the earth and the culture of trees (in short, agriculture), open with an invocation to Ceres and Bachus, as the guardians of these rustic arts: "Quid faciat laetas segetes, quo sidere terram Ferte simul Faunique pedem Dryadesque puellae : Now, is it not indeed striking and convincing, to find Bacon entit |