tre to find a translator; moreover, we have been assured again and again by most respectable personages,* that Bacon loathed the thought of his name being in any way associated with plays, players, and playwrights; and it may, very properly, be asked why Jonson was so intimate with him; why was he employed, professedly to translate these works into Latin, if not to furnish a satisfactory excuse for his presence in Bacon's study, where, under the "cover" of a translator, he could uninterruptedly and safely write The Great Instauration.

Jonson's youth, unlike that of Bacon, was indicative of what he would be. "There is no reason, says Bacon's latest and best biographer, "to suppose that Bacon was regarded as a wonderful child. Of the first sixteen years of his life, indeed, nothing is known that distinguishes him from a hundred other clever and well disposed boys." (Letters and Life, i., p. 1.) Jonson, on the other hand, was "one picked out of ten thousand." He early attracted the attention of the learned, commanded their respect, and won their sympathy. The anxious solicitude of Camden was, as we have seen, dutifully acknowledged and gratefully remembered. Jonson in his nineteenth year "was rapidly obtaining pre-eminence." (Gifford, Mem.) Before he was twenty-three, says Gifford, he had "mastered the Greek and Roman classics, and was, at the period of which we are now speaking (1605), among the first scholars of the age." His assistance was sought by the most eminent literary men of that brilliant time. The learned Selden to the end of his life consulted that "instructing judgment." Whalley (Life) says of him: "In his studies Jonson was laborious and indefatigable; his reading was copious and extensive; his memory so tenacious and strong that, when turned of forty, he could have repeated all that he ever wrote; his judgment was accurate and solid, and often consulted, by those who knew him well, in branches of very curious learning, and far remote from the flowery paths loved and frequented by the muses." (Gifford, Mem., p. 57.) He aided Raleigh in his History of the World, and the gallant

* Delia Bacon, W. H. Smith, Judge N. Holmes, Ignatius Donnelly.

adventurer inserted what Jonson wrote for him without a note of acknowledgment or a word of explanation. This Jonson revealed to Drummond, and Drummond told it to the world. The multitude of contemporary playwrights could not deny his ability or dispute his acquirements; but they jeered at him as a "translator," and hissed him for being "slow." "It takes him a year or two to write a play," they repeated again and again. We may heartily sympathize with their incredulity as to his special occupation, when we clearly perceive the wonderful extent of his knowledge.* No man possessed of such learning and genius could confine himself to the mere drudgery of the desk's dull wood," if he knew the measure of his abilities, and Jonson was serenely conscious of it. Nor can we believe that this term "translator" was only applied to him because of his tragedies, "Sejanus" and "Catiline," the characters in which were necessarily distinguished Romans, whose stories had been told repeatedly, and who must be represented with historical accuracy, and whose speeches must be the natural reflection of their deeds.

.6

Jonson winced under these accusations, and at last, annoyed beyond endurance by the buzzing nuisances, endeavored to silence them. He wrote "The Fox" in five weeks.

66

"We cannot," says Gifford (Mem., p. 23), " doubt the truth of his assertion, which was openly made on the stage. No human powers, however, could have completed such a work in such a time unless the author's mind had been previously stored with all the treasure of ancient and modern learning, on which he might draw at pleasure."

That Jonson condemned the unreasoning worship of Aristotle, that he pursued that course of study which was essential for the production of the works purporting to be Bacon's, cannot be disputed; and it may, not unadvisedly, be affirmed that there is scarcely an author quoted or referred to in those alleged

*"Of all his plays he never gained £200."-Drummond of Hawthornden, Macmillan, 1873, p. 100.

Nothing is more ridiculous than to make an author a dictator, as the schools have done Aristotle."-Jonson, Discoveries.

works of Bacon that is not also quoted or referred to in the undoubted works of Jonson. Indeed this is so strikingly manifest in the "Natural History," the uncompleted third part of the "Novum Organum," and the collections regarding medicine and alchemy, that an earnest student of Jonson's works can hardly fail to conclude, from the internal evidence alone, that these papers were originally compiled by Jonson. His own library was exactly the place whence one would expect to procure such material, for at that time, says Gifford, there was hardly a private library in the kingdom so rich in scarce and valuable books. (Gifford, Mem., 43.) A book in Jonson's possession was a book to be read: for, as he said, "Multiplicity of reading maketh a full man." (Disc. 4, Lectio.) He was no mere student of titles or devourer of names; the meat was what he sought, and so eagerly did he feed, that, Gifford questions "whether England ever possessed a better scholar than this extraordinary man." (Mem., 57.)

But, on the other hand, it is a constant source of wonder to Bacon's admirers how Bacon could possibly have found the time to write the works which are ascribed to him, while his nearest friends were equally at a loss to account for the extent of his knowledge." "When we consider," says Mr. Spedding, "the delicacy of his constitution, his frequent illnesses, and the number of hours that must have been absorbed by official or professional business which has left no trace, it is wonderful to think how much work he got out of himself. . . . Dr. Rawley, who had the nearest view of him in the studies of his later years, was at such a loss to account for the extent of his knowledge that he ascribed it to a kind of inspiration. For, though he was a great reader of books,' says he, yet he had not his knowledge from books, but from some grounds and notions within himself."" (Letters and Life, vii., 565.)

6

Jonson's knowledge was based on grounds more relative than these. "It was not enough for him," says Taine (Eng. Lit., i. 271)," to have stored himself from the best writers, to have their whole works continually in his mind, to scatter his pages, whether he would or not, with recollections of them.

He dug into the orators, critics, grammarians, and compilers of inferior rank; he picked up stray fragments; he took characters, jokes, refinements, from Athenæus, Libanius, Philostratus. He had so well entered into and digested the Greek and Latin ideas, that they were incorporated with his own. They enter into his speech without discord; they spring forth in him as vigorous as at their first birth; he originates even when he remembers. On every subject he had this thirst for knowledge and this gift of mastering knowledge. He knew alchemy when he wrote "The Alchemist." He is as familiar with alembics, retorts, receivers, as if he had passed his life seeking after the philosopher's stone. He explains incineration, calcination, imbibition, rectification, reverberation, as well as Agrippa and Paracelsus. If he speaks of cosmetics, he brings out a shopful of them; one might make out of his plays a dictionary of the oaths and costumes of courtiers; he seems to have a specialty in all branches. A still greater proof of his force is, that his learning in no wise mars his vigor; heavy as is the mass with which he loads himself, he carries it without stooping. This wonderful compound of reasoning and observation suddenly begins to move, and falls like a mountain on the overwhelmed reader. We must hear Sir Epicure Mammon unfold the vision of splendors and debauchery, in which he means to plunge, when he has learned to make gold. The refined and unchecked impurities of the Roman decadence, the splendid obscenities of Heliogabalus, the gigantic fancies of luxury and lewdness: tables of gold spread with foreign dainties, draughts of dissolved pearls, nature devastated to provide a single dish, the crimes committed by sensuality, against nature, reason, and justice, the delight in defying and outraging law-all these images pass before the eyes with the dash of a torrent and the force of a river. Phrase on phrase, event upon event, ideas and facts crowd into the dialogue to paint a situation, to give clearness to a character, produced from this deep memory, directed by this solid logic, launched by this powerful reflection.

"Yes, he had cumbered himself with science, clogged himself with theories, constituted himself theatrical critic and social

censor, filled his soul with unrelenting indignation, fostered a combative and morose disposition; but Heaven's dreams never deserted him. He is the brother of Shakespeare."

Gifford, after carefully examining the drift of Jonson's studies, and what we have of his works, is clearly of the opinion that something should show the use which he made of the knowledge gleaned from the

"Twice twelve years stor'd up humanity."

"It is evident," says the great critic, "that we have but a small part of what was written. Something was probably lost in the confusion which followed his death, and more in the wreck of his patron's fortune." (Memoirs, p. 49.)

(To be continued.)

ALFRED WAITES.

THE "TITUS ANDRONICUS": WAS IT SHAKESPEARE'S FIRST PLAY?-HOW WAS IT MOUNTED ON THE ELIZABETHAN STAGE?-DID IT MEET WITH FAVOR FROM THEATRE-GOERS? (Concluded from January number.)

Do not believe that Shakespeare's audiences or the audiences of his time were as horrible purveyors of disorder, riot, and crime as Gosson, Stubbes, and the rest would have us believe. Gosson and Stubbes were Puritans, and the Puritans were terrible persons, who, just then, had nothing but their pens to fight with; they were objectors per se (as Macaulay says, they opposed bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectator), and, while there were official censors of the stage in plenty, there were no censors of the stage defamers. Bad as these audiences were, I very much doubt if they, or if any audiences anywhere, could possibly be as nasty as some of the pages of Gosson and Stubbes; and it is best to remember in reading their pages that the art of cross-examination was not