extent, his course of life in the world. He began by believing himself born to be a chief adviser, no doubt the chief adviser, of the Sovereign, but he was thwarted in this ambition by his cousin-Robert Cecil-who, however, it is impossible to doubt, was a fitter man, both by temperament and training, for practical affairs. But thought is free, and with the position which he failed to obtain in earlier days he invests himself in imagination. In any case there is a most striking parallel between the circumstances of Bacon's life and those which are attributed to Prospero. Prospero explains that he lost his kingdom through "being transported and rapt in secret studies." Bacon time after time refers to his abstraction in the midst of affairs: "Multum incola fuit anima mea -My soul was a stranger in her pilgrimage.' And in

a letter written to Burghley at the age of thirty-one he says he does not fear that action will impair his health," because I count my ordinary course of study and meditation more painful than most parts of action are."

To return to Bacon's theory of "spirits," there are many passages in Shakespeare which embody the same theory, and which cannot be understood except in the light of it. Notably it appears in the great speech of Prospero in the Tempest, beginning: "These our actors, as I foretold you were all spirits and are melted into air." Perhaps the most striking one is in Troilus and Cressida, where Ulysses, speaking of the coquetry of Cressida, says:

Fie, fie upon her !
There's language in her eye, her cheek, her lip,

Nay, her foot speaks; her wanton spirits look out
At every joint and motive of her body.

These are the material "spirits " which Bacon said were "diffused in the substance of every part of the human body." In the same order of ideas are such passages as the following:

The nimble spirits in the arteries.

Love's Labour's Lost, iv. this kiss, if it durst speak,

3.

Would stretch thy spirits up into the air.

Lear, iv. 2.

Jessica. I am never merry when I hear sweet music.
Lorenzo. The reason is, your spirits are attentive.
Merchant of Venice, v. 1.

Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep.

Hamlet, iii. 4.

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame

Is lust in action.

Sonnet cxxix.

Bacon has the same expression in his Natural History, where he attributes one ill effect of such self-indulgence (dimness of sight) to "the expence of spirits "-(Spedding, Works, II. 556).

It is also a curious fact that Bacon's theory of "spirits found its way into Spenser's works.1 Thus, in the Faerie Queene, the agitation of Britomart on her first recognition of Arthegal, whom she had seen in the magic mirror, is thus described:

Soon as she heard the name of Arthegall,

Her hart did leape, and all her hart-strings tremble,

For sudden joy and secret feare withall;

And all her vitall powres, with motion nimble

To succour it, themselves gan there assemble;

That by the swift recourse of rushing blood
Right plaine appeard.

(IV. vi. 29).

In Bacon's Natural History, Experiment No. 716, we find: "Paleness, and going and coming of the colour, are caused by the burning of the spirits about the heart; which, to refresh themselves, call in more spirits from the outward parts."

Again in the same work, Experiment No. 713: "touching the impressions which the passions of the mind make on the body":

"Fear causeth paleness, trembling

The paleness

is caused for that the blood runneth inward to succour the

1 See my Spenser volume, chap. iv.

heart. The trembling is caused for that through the flight of the spirits inward the outward parts are destituted and not sustained."

Let the reader make what he can of these resemblances in thought and expression. By this time he knows my explanation of them.

CHAPTER XII

TIMON OF ATHENS

(See analysis in Table of Contents.)

The difficulty of reconciling the work of Shakespeare with the reported circumstances of his life has given rise in the minds of many intelligent people to what is called the "Shakespeare Problem." To the average Englishman, however, to whom any purely intellectual problem is abhorrent, no such difficulty presents itself. He is either content to accept tradition, or totally indifferent to the question. What does it matter, he asks, who wrote Shakespeare's plays?

It matters, however, in this way. Are we to believe that the plays of Shakespeare originated by a miracle, or can they be explained by any operation within the compass of natural law? Because if they were written by a man without education and with no social experience, it must have been by a miracle, of which there is no other recorded instance. If, on the other hand, they were written by someone who had personal experience of the life which they represent, then Shakespeare the actor from Stratford cannot have been the author. "Nature," wrote Dr. Johnson, "gives no man knowledge, and when images are collected by study and experience, can only assist in combining and applying them."

The truth of this assertion is borne out by all recorded instances. It will be found on examination that writers of imagination only succeed within the limits of their experience, and that directly they attempt to pass outside those limits their failure is conspicuous. Not that creations of genius are copies of nature, on the contrary, they are frequently entirely new creations, but they are always conditioned by reading and observation. Take, for instance, the case of Dickens, who, after Shakespeare, was perhaps endowed with the

greatest creative imagination of any English writer. When he attempts to portray representatives of the upper class in society, how monstrous, nay, how ridiculous, the travesty! Why? Clearly because he did not know them. Robert Burns, in poetry, supplies us with another example of the same phenomenon. The moment he attempts to pass outside the conditions of peasant scenes and sentiment, his genius flags and he becomes flat and insipid. Why? Because he is attempting to describe what he does not know. And this holds good throughout the whole range of letters.

Shakespeare, on the other hand, is most at home in the description of aristocratic people, and the whole atmosphere of his plays is aristocratic. The common people, to whom he is supposed to have belonged, and among whom, in the accepted story of his life, he was brought up, are always treated from the aristocratic standpoint, and frequently made the object of contempt and ridicule, to an extent which goes far beyond the writers even of that day. No opportunity is lost of pointing out the absurdity of their pretentions and relegating them to a position of subordination which is assumed to be in accordance with the law of nature and a necessity for the preservation of the social order. What would be thought of a man in the present day who, with such an origin, adopted the same attitude? It is so inconceivable that the very question seems absurd.

I propose, as a test case, to examine the play of Timon of Athens with a view to seeing whether the traditional authorship finds any support in the internal evidence. "Internal evidence" cannot lie; the only doubt about it lies in the inferences which may properly be drawn from it. Of this the reader himself must be the judge. I shall set out the facts, state the conclusions which I draw from them, and leave it to him to judge whether or no they are reasonable and legitimate.

The play of Timon of Athens has been a puzzle to the critics, and no wonder, for it is impossible to account for it as the work of a prosperous man settled in a provincial town. Also, Shakespeare died in 1616 and the play appeared for the first time in the folio of 1623, and there is no earlier trace of it.