security have you for these victories and garlands which you promise to yourself? Know you not of many which have made provision of laurel for the victory, and have been fain to exchange it with cypress for the funeral? of many which have bespoken fame to sound their triumphs, and have been glad to pray her to say nothing of them, and not to discover them in their flights? Corrupt Statesman, you that think by your engines and motions to govern the wheel of fortune; do you not mark that clocks cannot be long in temper, that jugglers are no longer in request when their tricks and sleights are once perceived? Nay do you not see that never any man made his own cunning and practice (without religion, honour, and moral honesty) his foundation, but he overbuilt himself, and in the end made his house a windfall? But give ear now to the comparison of my master's condition, and acknowledge such a difference as is betwixt the melting hail-stone and the solid pearl. Indeed it seemeth to depend as the globe of the earth seemeth to hang in the air; but yet it is firm and stable in itself. It is like a cube or die-form, which toss it or throw it any way, it ever lighteth upon a square. Is he denied the hopes of favours to come? He can resort to the remembrance of contentments past: destiny cannot repeal that which is past. Doth he find the acknowledgment of his affection small? He may find the merit of his affection the greater: fortune cannot have power over that which is within. Nay his falls are like the falls of Antæus; they renew his strength. His clouds are like the clouds of harvest, which make the sun break forth with greater force; his wanes and changes are like the moon, whose globe is all light towards the sun when it is all dark towards the world; such is the excellency of her nature and of his estate. Attend, you beadsman of the Muses, you take your pleasure in a wilderness of variety; but it is but of shadows. You are as a man rich in pictures, medals, and crystals. Your mind is of the water, which taketh all forms and impressions, but is weak of substance. Will you compare shadows with bodies, picture with life, variety of many beauties with the peerless excellency of one? the element of water with the element of fire? And such is the comparison between knowledge and love. Come out (man of war), you must be ever in noise. You will give laws, and advance force, and trouble nations, and remove landmarks of kingdoms, and hunt men, and pen tragedies in blood: and that which is worst of all, make all the virtues accessary to bloodshed. Hath the practice of force so deprived you of the use of reason, as that you will compare the interruption of society with the perfection of society, the conquest of bodies with the conquest of spirits, the terrestrial fire which destroyeth and dissolveth with the celestial fire which quickeneth and giveth life? And such is the comparison between the soldier and the lover. And as for you, untrue Politique, but truest bondman to Philautia, you that presume to bind occasion and to overwork fortune, I would ask you but one question. Did ever any lady, hard to please, or disposed to exercise her lover, enjoin him so hard tasks and commandments, as Philautia exacteth of you? While your life is nothing but a continual acting upon a stage; and that your mind must serve your humour, and yet your outward person must serve your end; so as you carry in one person two several servitudes to contrary masters. But I will leave you to the scorn of that mistress whom you undertake to govern; that is, to fortune, to whom Philautia hath bound you. And yet, you commissioners of Philautia, I will proceed one degree further. If I allowed both of your assurance and of your values as you have set them, may not my master enjoy his own felicity, and have all yours for advantage? I do not mean that he should divide himself in both pursuits, as in your fainting tales towards the conclusion you did yield him; but because all these are in the hands of his mistress more fully to bestow than they can be attained by your addresses, knowledge, fame, and fortune. For the Muses, they are tributary to her Majesty for the great liberties they have enjoyed in her kingdom during her most flourishing reign; in thankfulness whereof they have adorned and accomplished her Majesty with the gifts of all the sisters. What library can present such a story of great actions as her Majesty carrieth in her royal breast by the often return of this happy day? What worthy author or favourite of the Muses is not familiar with her? Or what language wherein the Muses have used to speak is unknown to her? Therefore, the hearing of her, the observing of her, the receiving instructions from her, may be to Erophilus a lecture exceeding all dead monuments of the Muses. For Fame, can all the exploits of the war win him such a title, as to have the name of favoured and selected servant of such a Queen? For Fortune, can any insolent politique promise to himself such a fortune by VOL. I. 2 c making his own way, as the excellency of her nature cannot deny to a careful, obsequious, and dutiful servant? And if he could, were it equal honour to obtain it by a shop of cunning as by the gift of such a hand? Therefore Erophilus' resolution is fixed: he renounceth Philautia, and all her enchantments. For her recreation, he will confer with his muse: for her defence and honour, he will sacrifice his life in the wars, hoping to be embalmed in the sweet odours of her remembrance; to her service will he consecrate all his watchful endeavours; and will ever bear in his heart the picture of her beauty, in his actions of her will, and in his fortune of her grace and favour. 9. Though there can be no reasonable doubt that the foregoing speeches were written by Bacon, it is I believe by mere accident that they pass for his. In Rowland Whyte's letter there is no allusion to Bacon at all: he speaks merely of "my Lord of Essex's device:" and we know from Sir Henry Wotton, that Essex had the reputation of a great artist in such matters. "For the Earl's writings," says he, "they are beyond example; especially in his familiar letters, and things of delight at Court, when he would remit his serious habits; as may be yet seen in his Impresses and Inventions of Entertainment, and above all in his darling piece of love and self-love. His style was an elegant perspicuity, rich of phrase, but seldom any bold metaphors; and so far from tumour, that it rather wanted a little. elevation." The paper containing the four speeches has nothing on the face of it to connect it with Bacon; and had it been found by itself, or in other company, by any one not familiar with Bacon's style or not in pursuit of Baconiana,-especially if he had seen the passages above quoted from the 'Sydney Papers' and the 'Reliquiæ Wottonianæ,'-it would naturally have been set down as the Earl's own composition. "The darling piece of love and self-love" might even be taken for a description of it; only that the controversy between love and self-love appears to have been, in different forms, the argument of more than one of these devices; and a rival claimant for the title is still extant, which has of late been connected with the personal history of Bacon, in a manner which, however illegitimate in itself, brings it legitimately within the scope of this work. In November, 1595, Sir Walter Ralegh, who had returned not long 1 Reliq. Wotton. p. 22. before from his voyage to Guiana, was preparing to send out another expedition thither. Mr. Dixon, in his 'Personal History of Lord Bacon, from Unpublished Papers,' informs us (p. 62) that Bacon, seeing Essex and Ralegh to be each needful to the other and to the common cause, laboured with tongue and pen to make peace between them; sought to push the new expedition; in spite of Ralegh's pride, which often marred his work, repeated to Essex that Ralegh would be his staunchest and safest friend: and (being engaged at the time in composing characters and words for a masque with which Essex was preparing to entertain the Queen) took occasion, by introducing "a scene in happy allusion to the Amazon and to Ralegh's voyage,” to pay him "a striking and conspicuous compliment." He adds that Essex, not having the grace to let it stand, "struck his pen through Bacon's lines," which thereupon "dropped from the acted scene and from the printed masque:" but that "a contemporary copy of the suppressed part remains in the State Paper Office-a proof how much, five years before the Earl rushed into treason, Bacon leaned to the side of her Majesty's Captain of the Guard." All this being entirely new, the unpublished papers which contain evidence of it would be of no ordinary interest; and it is somewhat tantalizing to be referred merely to "Notes of the supplemental part of the entertainment given at York House, November 17, 1595, S.P.O;" and again to "Entertainment given to the Queen at York House, November 17, 1595,"—without any further explanation. For the benefit as well of the trustful reader who takes all references for granted, as of the curious reader who desires to know more about them, I proceed to supply the omission. 66 The "Entertainment" referred to is merely some copy of the four speeches which we have just read, probably Nichols's (Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, iii. 371), whose note may have suggested the erroneous and otherwise unaccountable statement that it was given at York House. The other reference is meant to describe a manuscript in the State Paper Office, which is described in the original docket only as A Device made by the Earl of Essex for the Entertainment of her Majesty ;" and is a fair and full transcript, in a hand belonging to the end of the sixteenth or the beginning of the seventeenth century, of a device which has no apparent connexion with the other; nor any heading or note or mark of any kind, to indicate time, place, occasion, authorship, or any other thing connected with its history or composition. So far therefore, there is nothing whatever to countenance any part of the story: nothing to connect it with Bacon's device, or with York House, or with the year 1595; nothing to suggest either that it was written by Bacon, or that it was suppressed by Essex, or that it was not exhibited on the occasion for which it was composed, whatever that occasion may have been. For the compliment to Ralegh, pregnant with so much unsuspected personal history now for the first time revealed, we must look of course in the device itself, which has been printed before (Lives of the Earls of Essex, ii. 501), but of which the following is a more correct copy. The Squire's Speech. I have brought before your Majesty two wanderers, the one (as it should seem) some Indian youth, the other white of complexion and expert in languages: to me they will neither give account whence they come nor whither they would; but of me at the first acquaintance they have curiously inquired of the state of our country, of the manner of our government, of the disposition of the people, and specially of many circumstances of your Majesty's person; which discovery of their high conceit, aiming directly at yourself, hath made me bring them into your Highness's presence, that they [may] make their purgation to yourself. The Attendant or Conductor to the Indian Prince. Excellent Queen, In the most retired part of that division which those of Europe call the West Indias, near unto the fountain of the great river of the Amazons, there governeth at this day a mighty monarch, whose rare happiness in all things else is only eclipsed in the calamity of his son, this young Prince, who was born blind. This only tax and imposition hath fortune set upon the father's felicity, and nature laid upon the son's perfections; for this want removed, never was there in that royal line a spark of that expectation, so lovely of presence, so active of body, and full of spirit. But yet no one thing hath so much affected both his father and his people towards him, as an ancient prophecy that it should be he that should expel the Castilians, a nation of strangers, which as a scourge hath wound itself about the body of that continent, though it hath not pierced near the heart thereof. This fatal glory, added to his other excellency, hath made the king his father to visit his temples with continual sacrifices, gifts, and observances, to solicit his son's cure supernaturally. And at last, this present year, out of one of the holiest vaults was delivered to him an oracle in these words: Seated between the Old World and the New, A land there is no other land may touch, Stories or fables do describe no such. Never did Atlas such a burden bear, Weakness of friends, errors of servants best. |