'Go bring the RABBLE, o'er whom I give thee power, here to this place,' was the New Magician's word.

[Here is another version of it.

'When Sir Nicholas Bacon, the Lord Keeper, lived, every room in Gorhambury was served with a pipe of water from the pond distant about a mile off. In the lifetime of Mr. Anthony Bacon the water ceased, and his lordship coming to the inheritance could not recover the water without infinite charge. When he was Lord Chancellor, he built Verulam House close by the pond yard, for a place of privacy when he was called upon to dispatch any urgent business. And being asked why he built there, his lordship answered that, seeing he could not carry the water to his House, he would carry his House to the water.]

This is not the place for the particulars of this history or for the barest outline of them. They make a volume of themselves. But this glimpse of the circumstances under which the works were composed which it is the object of this volume to open, appeared at the last moment to be required, in the absence of the Historical Key which the proper development of them makes, to that Art of Delivery and Tradition by means of which the secrets of the Elizabethan Age have been conveyed to us.



CHAPTER III.

EXTRACTS FROM THE LIFE OF RALEIGH.—RALEIGH'S SCHOOL

'Our court shall be a little Academe, Still and contemplative in living Art.' 'What is the end of study? let me know.'

Love's Labour's Lost.

But it was not on the New World wholly, that this man of many toils could afford to lavish the revenues which the Queen's favour brought him. It was not to that enterprise alone that he was willing to dedicate the eclat and influence of his rising name. There was work at home which concerned him more nearly, not less deeply, to which that new influence was made at once subservient; and in that there were enemies to be encountered more formidable than the Spaniard on his own deck, or on his own coast, with all his war-weapons and defences. It was an enemy which required a strategy more subtle than any which the exigencies of camp and field had called for.

The fact that this hero throughout all his great public career—so full of all kinds of excitement and action—enough, one would say, to absorb the energies of a mind of any ordinary human capacity—that this soldier whose name had become, on the Spanish coasts, what the name of 'Coeur de Lion' was in the Saracen nursery, that this foreign adventurer who had a fleet of twenty-three ships sailing at one time on his errands—this legislator, for he sat in Parliament as representative of his native shire—this magnificent courtier, who had raised himself, without any vantage-ground at all, from a position wholly obscure, by his personal achievements and merits, to a place in the social ranks so exalted; to a place in the state so near that—which was chief and absolute—the fact that this many-sided man of deeds, was all the time a literary man, not a scholar merely, but himself an Originator, a Teacher, the Founder of a School—this is the explanatory point in this history—this is the point in it which throws light on all the rest of it, and imparts to it its true dignity.

For he was not a mere blind historical agent, driven by fierce instincts, intending only their own narrow ends, without any faculty of comprehensive survey and choice of intentions; impelled by thirst of adventure, or thirst of power, or thirst of gold, to the execution of his part in the great human struggle for conservation and advancement; working like other useful agencies in the Providential Scheme—like 'the stormy wind fulfilling his pleasure.'

There is, indeed, no lack of the instinctive element in this heroic 'composition;' there is no stronger and more various and complete development of it. That 'lumen siccum' which his great contemporary is so fond of referring to in his philosophy, that dry light which is so apt, he tells us, in most men's minds, to get 'drenched' a little sometimes, in 'the humours and affections,' and distorted and refracted in their mediums, did not always, perhaps, in its practical determinations, escape from that accident even in the philosopher's own; but in this stormy, world-hero, there was a latent volcano of will and passion; there was, in his constitution, 'a complexion' which might even seem to the bystanders to threaten at times, by its 'o'ergrowth,' the 'very pales and forts of reason'; but the intellect was, notwithstanding, in its due proportion in him; and it was the majestic intellect that triumphed in the end. It was the large and manly comprehension, 'the large discourse looking before and after,' it was the overseeing and active principle of 'the larger whole,' that predominated and had the steering of his course. It is the common human form which shines out in him and makes that manly demonstration, which commands our common respect, in spite of those particular defects and o'ergrowths which are apt to mar its outline in the best historical types and patterns of it, we have been able to get as yet. It was the intellect, and the sense which belongs to that in its integrity—it was the truth and the feeling of its obligation, which was sovereign with him. For this is a man who appears to have been occupied with the care of the common-weal more than with anything else; and that, too, under great disadvantages and impediments, and when there was no honour in caring for it truly, but that kind of honour which he had so much of; for this was the time precisely which the poet speaks of in that play in which he tells us that the end of playing is 'to give to the very age and body of the time its form and pressure.' This was the time when 'virtue of vice must pardon beg, and curb and beck for leave to do it good.' It was the relief of man's estate, or the Creator's glory, that he busied himself about; that was the end of his ends; or if not, then was he, indeed, no hero at all. For it was the doctrine of his own school, and 'the first human principle' taught in it, that men who act without reference to that distinctly human aim, without that manly consideration and kind-liness of purpose, can lay no claim either to divine or human honours; that they are not, in fact, men, but failures; specimens of an unsuccessful attempt in nature, at an advancement; or, as his great contemporary states it more clearly, 'only a nobler kind of vermin.'

During all the vicissitudes of his long and eventful public life, Raleigh was still persistently a scholar. He carried his books—his 'trunk of books' with him in all his adventurous voyages; and they were his 'companions' in the toil and excitement of his campaigns on land. He studied them in the ocean-storm; he studied them in his tent, as Brutus studied in his. He studied them year after year, in the dim light which pierced the deep embrasure of those walls with which tyranny had thought to shut in at last his world-grasping energies.

He had had some chance to study 'men and manners' in that strange and various life of his, and he did not lack the skill to make the most of it; but he was not content with that narrow, one-sided aspect of life and human nature, to which his own individual personal experience, however varied, must necessarily limit him. He would see it under greater varieties, under all varieties of conditions. He would know the history of it; he would 'delve it to the root.' He would know how that particular form of it, which he found on the surface in his time, had come to be the thing he found it. He would know what it had been in other times, in the beginning, or in that stage of its development in which the historic light first finds it. He was a man who wished even to know what it had been in the Assyrian, in the Phenician, in the Hebrew, in the Egyptian; he would see what it had been in the Greek, and in the Roman. He was, indeed, one of that clique of Elizabethan Naturalists, who thought that there was no more curious thing in nature; and instead of taking a Jack Cade view of the subject, and inferring that an adequate knowledge of it comes by nature, as reading and writing do in that worthy's theory of education, it was the private opinion of this school, that there was no department of learning which a scholar could turn his attention to, that required a more severe and thorough study and experiment, and none that a man of a truly scientific turn of mind would find better worth his leisure. And the study of antiquity had not yet come to be then what it is now; at least, with men of this stamp. Such men did not study it to discipline their minds, or to get a classic finish to their style. The books that such a man as this could take the trouble to carry about with him on such errands as those that he travelled on, were books that had in them, for the eager eyes that then o'er-ran them, the world's 'news'—the world's story. They were full of the fresh living data of his conclusions. They were notes that the master minds of all the ages had made for him; invaluable aid and sympathy they had contrived to send to him. The man who had been arrested in his career, more ignominiously than the magnificent Tully had been in his,—in a career, too, a thousand times more noble,—by a Caesar, indeed, but such a Caesar;—the man who had sat for years with the executioner's block in his yard, waiting only for a scratch of the royal pen, to bring down upon him that same edge which the poor Cicero, with all his truckling, must feel at last,—such a one would look over the old philosopher's papers with an apprehension of their meaning, somewhat more lively than that of the boy who reads them for a prize, or to get, perhaps, some classic elegancies transfused into his mind.

During the ten years which intervene between the date of Raleigh's first departure for the Continent and that of his beginning favour at home, already he had found means for ekeing out and perfecting that liberal education which Oxford had only begun for him, so that it was as a man of rarest literary accomplishments that he made his brilliant debut at the English Court, where the new Elizabethan Age of Letters was just then beginning.

He became at once the centre of that little circle of highborn wits and poets, the elder wits and poets of the Elizabethan age, that were then in their meridian there. Sir Philip Sidney, Thomas Lord Buckhurst, Henry Lord Paget, Edward Earl of Oxford, and some others, are included in the contemporary list of this courtly company, whose doings are somewhat mysteriously adverted to by a critic, who refers to the condition of 'the Art of Poesy' at that time. 'The gentleman who wrote the late Shepherds' Calendar' was beginning then to attract considerable attention in this literary aristocracy.

The brave, bold genius of Raleigh flashed new life into that little nucleus of the Elizabethan development. The new 'Round Table,' which that newly-beginning age of chivalry, with its new weapons and devices, and its new and more heroic adventure had created, was not yet 'full' till he came in. The Round Table grew rounder with this knight's presence. Over those dainty stores of the classic ages, over those quaint memorials of the elder chivalry, that were spread out on it, over the dead letter of the past, the brave Atlantic breeze came in, the breath of the great future blew, when the turn came for this knight's adventure; whether opened in the prose of its statistics, or set to its native music in the mystic melodies of the bard who was there to sing it. The Round Table grew spheral, as he sat talking by it; the Round Table dissolved, as he brought forth his lore, and unrolled his maps upon it; and instead of it,—with all its fresh yet living interests, tracked out by land and sea, with the great battle-ground of the future outlined on it,—revolved the round world. 'Universality' was still the motto of these Paladins; but 'THE GLOBE'—the Globe, with its TWO hemispheres, became henceforth their device.

The promotion of Raleigh at Court was all that was needed to make him the centre and organiser of that new intellectual movement which was then just beginning there. He addressed himself to the task as if he had been a man of literary tastes and occupations merely, or as if that particular crisis had been a time of literary leisure with him, and there were nothing else to be thought of just then. The relation of those illustrious literary partners of his, whom he found already in the field when he first came to it, to that grand development of the English genius in art and philosophy which follows, ought not indeed to be overlooked or slightly treated in any thorough history of it. For it has its first beginning here in this brilliant assemblage of courtiers, and soldiers, and scholars,—this company of Poets, and Patrons and Encouragers of Art and Learning. Least of all should the relation which the illustrious founder of this order sustains to the later development be omitted in any such history,—'the prince and mirror of all chivalry,' the patron of the young English Muse, whose untimely fate keeps its date for ever green, and fills the air of this new 'Helicon' with immortal lamentations. The shining foundations of that so splendid monument of the later Elizabethan genius, which has paralyzed and confounded all our criticism, were laid here. The extraordinary facilities which certain departments of literature appeared to offer, for evading the restrictions which this new poetic and philosophic development had to encounter from the first, already began to attract the attention of men acquainted with the uses to which it had been put in antiquity, and who knew what gravity of aim, what height of execution, that then rude and childish English Play had been made to exhibit under other conditions;—men fresh from the study of those living and perpetual monuments of learning, which the genius of antiquity has left in this department. But the first essays of the new English scholarship in this untried field,—the first attempts at original composition here, derive, it must be confessed, their chief interest and value from that memorable association in which we find them. It was the first essay, which had to be made before those finished monuments of art, which command our admiration on their own account wholly, could begin to appear. It was 'the tuning of the instruments, that those who came afterwards might play the better.' We see, of course, the stiff, cramped hand of the beginner here, instead of the grand touch of the master, who never comes till his art has been prepared to his hands,—till the details of its execution have been mastered for him by others. In some arts there must be generations of essays before he can get his tools in a condition for use. Ages of prophetic genius, generations of artists, who dimly saw afar off, and struggled after his perfections, must patiently chip and daub their lives away, before ever the star of his nativity can begin to shine.

Considering what a barbaric age it was that the English mind was emerging from then; and the difficulties attending the first attempt to create in the English literature, anything which should bear any proportion to those finished models of skill which were then dazzling the imagination of the English scholar in the unworn gloss of their fresh revival here, and discouraging, rather than stimulating, the rude poetic experiment;—considering what weary lengths of essay there are always to be encountered, where the standard of excellence is so far beyond the power of execution; we have no occasion to despise the first bold attempts to overcome these difficulties which the good taste of this company has preserved to us. They are just such works as we might expect under those circumstances;—yet full of the pedantries of the new acquisition, overflowing on the surface with the learning of the school, sparkling with classic allusions, seizing boldly on the classic original sometimes, and working their new fancies into it; but, full already of the riant vigour and originality of the Elizabethan inspiration; and never servilely copying a foreign original. The English genius is already triumphant in them. Their very crudeness is not without its historic charm, when once their true place in the structure we find them in, is recognised. In the later works, this crust of scholarship has disappeared, and gone below the surface. It is all dissolved, and gone into the clear intelligence;— it has all gone to feed the majestic current of that new, all-subduing, all-grasping originality. It is in these earlier performances that the stumbling-blocks of our present criticism are strewn so thickly. Nobody can write any kind of criticism of the 'Comedy of Errors,' for instance, without recognizing the Poet's acquaintance with the classic model, [See a recent criticism in 'The Times.']—without recognizing the classic treatment. 'Love's Labour's Lost,' 'The Taming of the Shrew,' the condemned parts of 'Henry the VI.,' and generally the Poems which are put down in our criticism as doubtful, or as the earlier Poems, are just those Poems in which the Poet's studies are so flatly betrayed on the surface. Among these are plays which were anonymously produced by the company performing at the Rose Theatre, and other companies which English noblemen found occasion to employ in their service then. These were not so much as produced at the theatre which has had the honor of giving its name to other productions, bound up with them. We shall find nothing to object to in that somewhat heterogeneous collection of styles, which even a single Play sometimes exhibits, when once the history of this phenomenon accompanies it. The Cathedrals that were built, or re-built throughout, just at the moment in which the Cathedral Architecture had attained its ultimate perfection, are more beautiful to the eye, perhaps, than those in which the story of its growth is told from the rude, massive Anglo-Saxon of the crypt or the chancel, to the last refinement of the mullion, and groin, and tracery. But the antiquary, at least, does not regret the preservation. And these crude beginnings here have only to be put in their place, to command from the critic, at least, a similar respect. For here, too, the history reports itself to the eye, and not less palpably.

It may seem surprising, and even incredible, to the modern critic, that men in this position should find any occasion to conceal their relation to those quite respectable contributions to the literature of the time, which they found themselves impelled to make. The fact that they did so, is one that we must accept, however, on uncontradicted cotemporary testimony, and account for it as we can. The critic who published his criticisms when 'the gentleman who wrote the late Shepherd's Calendar' was just coming into notice, however inferior to our modern critics in other respects, had certainly a better opportunity of informing himself on this point, than they can have at present. 'They have writ excellently well,' he says of this company of Poets,—this 'courtly company,' as he calls them,—' they have writ excellently well, if their doings could be found out and made public with the rest.' Sir Philip Sidney, Raleigh, and the gentleman who wrote the late Shepherd's Calendar, are included in the list of Poets to whom this remark is applied. It is Raleigh's verse which is distinguished, however, in this commendation as the most 'lofty, insolent, and passionate;' a description which applies to the anonymous poems alluded to, but is not particularly applicable to those artificial and tame performances which he was willing to acknowledge. And this so commanding Poet, who was at the same time an aspiring courtier and meddler in affairs of state, and who chose, for some mysterious reason or other, to forego the honours which those who were in the secret of his literary abilities and successes,—the very best judges of poetry in that time, too, were disposed to accord him,—and we are not without references to cases in antiquity corresponding very nearly to this; and which seemed to furnish, at least, a sufficient precedent for this proceeding;—this so successful poet, and courtier, and great man of his time, was already in a position to succeed at once to that chair of literary patronage which the death of Sir Philip Sidney had left vacant. Instinctively generous, he was ready to serve the literary friends whom he attracted to him, not less lavishly than he had served the proud Queen herself, when he threw his gay cloak in her obstructed path,—at least, he was not afraid of risking those sudden splendours which her favour was then showering upon him, by wearying her with petitions on their behalf. He would have risked his new favour, at least with his 'Cynthia,'—that twin sister of Phoebus Apollo,—to make her the patron, if not the inspirer of the Elizabethan genius. 'When will you cease to be a beggar, Raleigh?' she said to him one day, on one of these not infrequent occasions. 'When your Majesty ceases to be a most gracious mistress,' was this courtier's reply. It is recorded of her, that 'she loved to hear his reasons to her demands.'

But though, with all his wit and eloquence, he could not contrive to make of the grand-daughter of Henry the Seventh, a Pericles, or an Alexander, or a Ptolemy, or an Augustus, or an encourager of anything that did not appear to be directly connected with her own particular ends, he did succeed in making her indirectly a patron of the literary and scientific development which was then beginning to add to her reign its new lustre,—which was then suing for leave to lay at her feet its new crowns and garlands. Indirectly, he did convert her into a patron,—a second-hand patron of those deeper and more subtle movements of the new spirit of the time, whose bolder demonstrations she herself had been forced openly to head. Seated on the throne of Henry the Seventh, she was already the armed advocate of European freedom;—Raleigh had contrived to make her the legal sponsor for the New World's liberties; it only needed that her patronage should be systematically extended to that new enterprise for the emancipation of the human life from the bondage of ignorance, from the tyranny of unlearning,—that enterprise which the gay, insidious Elizabethan literature was already beginning to flower over and cover with its devices,—it only needed that, to complete the anomaly of her position. And that through Raleigh's means was accomplished.

He became himself the head of a little Alexandrian establishment. His house was a home for men of learning. He employed men in literary and scientific researches on his account, whose business it was to report to him their results. He had salaried scholars at his table, to impart to him their acquisitions, Antiquities, History, Poetry, Chemistry, Mathematics, scientific research of all kinds, came under his active and persevering patronage. Returning from one of his visits to Ireland, whither he had gone on this occasion to inspect a seignorie which his 'sovereign goddess' had then lately conferred upon him, he makes his re-appearance at court with that so obscure personage, the poet of the 'Faery Queene,' under his wing;—that same gentleman, as the court is informed, whose bucolics had already attracted so much attention in that brilliant circle. By a happy coincidence, Raleigh, it seems, had discovered this Author in the obscurity of his clerkship in Ireland, and had determined to make use of his own influence at court to push his brother poet's fortunes there; but his efforts to benefit this poor bard personally, do not appear to have been attended at any time with much success. The mysterious literary partnership between these two, however, which dates apparently from an earlier period, continues to bring forth fruit of the most successful kind; and the 'Faery Queene' is not the only product of it.

All kinds of books began now to be dedicated to this new and so munificent patron of arts and letters. His biographers collect his public history, not from political records only, but from the eulogies of these manifold dedications. Ladonnier, the artist, publishes his Sketches of the New World through his aid. Hooker dedicates his History of Ireland to him; Hakluyt, his Voyages to Florida. A work 'On Friendship' is dedicated to him; another 'On Music,' in which art he had found leisure, it seems, to make himself a proficient; and as to the poetic tributes to him,—some of them at least are familiar to us already. In that gay court, where Raleigh and his haughty rivals were then playing their deep games,—where there was no room for Spenser's muse, and the worth of his 'Old Song' was grudgingly reckoned,—the 'rustling in silks' is long since over, but the courtier's place in the pageant of the 'Faery Queene' remains, and grows clearer with the lapse of ages. That time, against which he built so perseveringly, and fortified himself on so many sides, will not be able to diminish there 'one dowle that's in his plume.' [He was also a patron of Plays and Players in this stage of his career, and entertained private parties at his house with very recherche performances of that kind sometimes.]

In the Lord Timon of the Shakspere piece, which was rewritten from an Academic original after Raleigh's consignment to the Tower,—in that fierce satire into which so much Elizabethan bitterness is condensed, under the difference of the reckless prodigality which is stereotyped in the fable, we get, in the earlier scenes, some glimpses of this 'Athenian' also, in this stage of his career.

But it was not as a Patron only, or chiefly, that he aided the new literary development. A scholar, a scholar so earnest, so indefatigable, it followed of course that he must be, in one form or another, an Instructor also; for that is still, under all conditions, the scholar's destiny—it is still, in one form or another, his business on the earth. But with that temperament which was included among the particular conditions of his genius, and with those special and particular endowments of his for another kind of intellectual mastery, he could not be content with the pen—with the Poet's, or the Historian's, or the Philosopher's pen—as the instrument of his mental dictation. A Teacher thus furnished and ordained, seeks, indeed, naturally and instinctively, a more direct and living and effective medium of communication with the audience which his time is able to furnish him, whether 'few' or many, whether 'fit' or unfit, than the book can give him. He must have another means of 'delivery and tradition,' when the delivery or tradition is addressed to those whom he would associate with him in his age, to work with him as one man, or those to whom he would transmit it in other ages, to carry it on to its perfection—those to whom he would communicate his own highest view, those whom he would inform with his patiently-gathered lore, those whom he would instruct and move with his new inspirations. For the truth has become a personality with him—it is his nobler self. He will live on with it. He will live or die with it.

For such a one there is, perhaps, no institution ready in his time to accept his ministry. No chair at Oxford or Cambridge is waiting for him. For they are, of course, and must needs be, the strong-holds of the past—those ancient and venerable seats of learning, 'the fountains and nurseries of all the humanities,' as a Cambridge Professor calls them, in a letter addressed to Raleigh. The principle of these larger wholes is, of course, instinctively conservative. Their business is to know nothing of the new. The new intellectual movement must fight its battles through without, and come off conqueror there, or ever those old Gothic doors will creak on their reluctant hinges to give it ever so pinched an entrance. When it has once fought its way, and forced itself within—when it has got at last some marks of age and custom on its brow—then, indeed, it will stand as the last outwork of that fortuitous conglomeration, to be defended in its turn against all comers. Already the revived classics had been able to push from their chairs, and drive into corners, and shut up finally and put to silence, the old Aristotelian Doctors—the Seraphic and Cherubic Doctors of their day—in their own ancient halls. It would be sometime yet, perhaps, however, before that study of the dead languages, which was of course one prominent incident of the first revival of a dead learning, would come to take precisely the same place in those institutions, with their one instinct of conservation and 'abhorrence of change,' which the old monastic philosophy had taken in its day; but that change once accomplished, the old monastic philosophy itself, religious as it was, was never held more sacred than this profane innovation would come to be. It would be some time before those new observations and experiments, which Raleigh and his school were then beginning to institute, experiments and inquiries which the universities would have laughed to scorn in their day, would come to be promoted to the Professor's chair; but when they did, it would perhaps be difficult to convince a young gentleman liberally educated, at least, under the wings of one of those 'ancient and venerable' seats of learning, now gray in Raleigh's youthful West—ambitious, perhaps, to lead off in this popular innovation, where Saurians, and Icthyosaurians, and Entomologists, and Chonchologists are already hustling the poor Greek and Latin Teachers into corners, and putting them to silence with their growing terminologies—it would perhaps be difficult to convince one who had gone through the prescribed course of treatment in one of these 'nurseries of humanity,' that the knowledge of the domestic habits and social and political organisations of insects and shell-fish, or even the experiments of the laboratory, though never so useful and proper in their place, are not, after all, the beginning and end of a human learning. It was no such place as that that this department of the science of nature took in the systems or notions of its Elizabethan Founders. They were 'Naturalists,' indeed; but that did not imply, with their use of the term, the absence of the natural common human sense in the selection of the objects of their pursuits. 'It is a part of science to make judicious inquiries and wishes,' says the speaker in chief for this new doctrine of nature; speaking of the particular and special applications of it which he is forbidden to make openly, but which he instructs, and prepares, and charges his followers to make for themselves.

One of those innovations, one of those movements in which the new ground of ages of future culture is first chalked out—a movement whose end is not yet, whose beginning we have scarce yet seen—was made in England, not very far from the time in which Sir Walter Raleigh, began first to convert the eclat of his rising fortunes at home, and the splendour of his heroic achievements abroad, and all those new means of influence which his great position gave him, to the advancement of those deeper, dearer ambitions, which the predominance of the nobler elements in his constitution made inevitable with him. Even then he was ready to endanger those golden opinions, waiting to be worn in their newest gloss, not cast aside so soon, and new-won rank, and liberty and life itself, for the sake of putting himself into his true intellectual relations with his time, as a philosopher and a beginner of a new age in the human advancement. For 'spirits are not finely touched but to fine issues.'

If there was no Professor's Chair, if there was no Pulpit or Bishop's Stall waiting for him, and begging his acceptance of its perquisites, he must needs institute a chair of his own, and pay for leave to occupy it. If there was no university with its appliances within his reach, he must make a university of his own. The germ of a new 'universality' would not be wanting in it. His library, or his drawing-room, or his 'banquet,' will be Oxford enough for him. He will begin it as the old monks began theirs, with their readings. Where the teacher is, there must the school be gathered together. And a school in the end there will be: a school in the end the true teacher will have, though he begin it, as the barefoot Athenian began his, in the stall of the artisan, or in the chat of the Gymnasium, amid the compliments of the morning levee, or in the woodland stroll, or in the midnight revel of the banquet.

When the hour and the man are indeed met, when the time is ripe, and one truly sent, ordained of that Power which chooses, not one only—what uncloaked atheism is that, to promulgate in an age like this!—not the Teachers and Rabbis of one race only, but all the successful agents of human advancement, the initiators of new eras of man's progress, the inaugurators of new ages of the relief of the human estate and the Creator's glory—when such an one indeed appears, there will be no lack of instrumentalities. With some verdant hill-side, it may be, some blossoming knoll or 'mount' for his 'chair,' with a daisy or a lily in his hand, or in a fisherman's boat, it may be, pushed a little way from the strand, he will begin new ages.

The influence of Raleigh upon his time cannot yet be fully estimated; because, in the first place, it was primarily of that kind which escapes, from its subtlety, the ordinary historical record; and, in the second place, it was an influence at the time necessarily covert, studiously disguised. His relation to the new intellectual development of his age might, perhaps, be characterised as Socratic; though certainly not because he lacked the use, and the most masterly use, of that same weapon with which his younger contemporary brought out at last, in the face of his time, the plan of the Great Instauration. In the heart of the new establishment which the magnificent courtier, who was a 'Queen's delight,' must now maintain, there soon came to be a little 'Academe.' The choicest youth of the time, 'the Spirits of the Morning Sort,' gathered about him. It was the new philosophic and poetic genius of the age that he attracted to him; it was on that philosophic and poetic genius that he left his mark for ever.

He taught them, as the masters taught of old, in dialogues—in words that could not then be written, in words that needed the master's modulation to give them their significance. For the new doctrine had need to be clothed in a language of its own, whose inner meaning only those who had found their way to its inmost shrine were able to interpret.

We find some contemporary and traditional references to this school, which are not without their interest and historical value, as tending to show the amount of influence which it was supposed to have exerted on the time, as well as the acknowledged necessity for concealment in the studies pursued in it. The fact that such an Association existed, that it began with Raleigh, that young men of distinction were attracted to it, and that in such numbers, and under such conditions, that it came to be considered ultimately as a 'School,' of which he was the head-master—the fact that the new experimental science was supposed to have had its origin in this association,—that opinions, differing from the received ones, were also secretly discussed in it,—that anagrams and other devices were made use of for the purpose of infolding the esoteric doctrines of the school in popular language, so that it was possible to write in this language acceptably to the vulgar, and without violating preconceived opinions, and at the same time instructively to the initiated,—all this remains, even on the surface of statements already accessible to any scholar,—all this remains, either in the form of contemporary documents, or in the recollections of persons who have apparently had it from the most authentic sources, from persons who profess to know, and who were at least in a position to know, that such was the impression at the time.

But when the instinctive dread of innovation was already so keenly on the alert, when Elizabeth was surrounded with courtiers still in their first wrath at the promotion of the new 'favourite,' indignant at finding themselves so suddenly overshadowed with the growing honours of one who had risen from a rank beneath their own, and eagerly watching for an occasion against him, it was not likely that such an affair as this was going to escape notice altogether. And though the secrecy with which it was conducted, might have sufficed to elude a scrutiny such as theirs, there was another, and more eager and subtle enemy,—an enemy which the founder of this school had always to contend with, that had already, day and night, at home and abroad, its Argus watch upon him. That vast and secret foe, which he had arrayed against him on foreign battle fields, knew already what kind of embodiment of power this was that was rising into such sudden favour here at home, and would have crushed him in the germ—that foe which would never rest till it had pursued him to the block, which was ready to join hands with his personal enemies in its machinations, in the court of Elizabeth, as well as in the court of her successor, that vast, malignant, indefatigable foe, in which the spirit of the old ages lurked, was already at his threshold, and penetrating to the most secret chamber of his councils. It was on the showing of a Jesuit that these friendly gatherings of young men at Raleigh's table came to be branded as 'a school of Atheism.' And it was through such agencies, that his enemies at court were able to sow suspicions in Elizabeth's mind in regard to the entire orthodoxy of his mode of explaining certain radical points in human belief, and in regard to the absolute 'conformity' of his views on these points with those which she had herself divinely authorised, suspicions which he himself confesses he was never afterwards able to eradicate. The matter was represented to her, we are told, 'as if he had set up for a doctor in the faculty and invited young gentlemen into his school, where the Bible was jeered at,' and the use of profane anagrams was inculcated. The fact that he associated with him in his chemical and mathematical studies, and entertained in his house, a scholar labouring at that time under the heavy charge of getting up 'a philosophical theology,' was also made use of greatly to his discredit.

And from another uncontradicted statement, which dates from a later period, but which comes to us worded in terms as cautious as if it had issued directly from the school itself, we obtain another glimpse of these new social agencies, with which the bold, creative, social genius that was then seeking to penetrate on all sides the custom-bound time, would have roused and organised a new social life in it. It is still the second-hand hearsay testimony which is quoted here. 'He is said to have set up an Office of Address, and it is supposed that the office might respect a more liberal intercourse—a nobler mutuality of advertisement, than would perhaps admit of all sorts of persons.' 'Raleigh set up a kind of Office of Address,' says another, 'in the capacity of an agency for all sorts of persons.' John Evelyn, refers also to that long dried fountain of communication which Montaigne first proposed, Sir Walter Raleigh put in practice, and Mr. Hartlib endeavoured to renew.

'This is the scheme described by Sir W. Pellis, which is referred traditionally to Raleigh and Montaigne (see Book I. chap. xxxiv.) An Office of Address whereby the wants of all may be made known to ALL (that painful and great instrument of this design), where men may know what is already done in the business of learning, what is at present in doing, and what is intended to be done, to the end that, by such a general communication of design and mutual assistance, the wits and endeavours of the world may no longer be as so many scattered coals, which, for want of union, are soon quenched, whereas being laid together they would have yielded a comfortable light and heat. [This is evidently traditional language] ... such as advanced rather to the improvement of men themselves than their means.'—OLDYS.

This then is the association of which Raleigh was the chief; this was the state, within the state which he was founding. ('See the reach of this man,' says Lord Coke on his Trial.) It is true that the honour is also ascribed to Montaigne; but we shall find, as we proceed with this inquiry, that all the works and inventions of this new English school, of which Raleigh was chief, all its new and vast designs for man's relief, are also claimed by that same aspiring gentleman, as they were, too, by another of these Egotists, who came out in his own name with this identical project.

It was only within the walls of a school that the great principle of the new philosophy of fact and practice, which had to pretend to be profoundly absorbed in chemical experiments, or in physical observations, and inductions of some kind—though not without an occasional hint of a broader intention,—it was only in esoteric language that the great principles of this philosophy could begin to be set forth in their true comprehension. The very trunk of it, the primal science itself, must needs be mystified and hidden in a shower of metaphysical dust, and piled and heaped about with the old dead branches of scholasticism, lest men should see for themselves how broad and comprehensive must be the ultimate sweep of its determinations; lest men should see for themselves, how a science which begins in fact, and returns to it again, which begins in observation and experiment, and returns in scientific practice, in scientific arts, in scientific re-formation, might have to do, ere all was done, with facts not then inviting scientific investigation—with arts not then inviting scientific reform.

In consequence of a sudden and common advancement of intelligence among the leading men of that age, which left the standard of intelligence represented in more than one of its existing institutions, very considerably in the rear of its advancement, there followed, as the inevitable result, a tendency to the formation of some medium of expression,—whether that tendency was artistically developed or not, in which the new and nobler thoughts of men, in which their dearest beliefs, could find some vent and limited interchange and circulation, without startling the ear. Eventually there came to be a number of men in England at this time,—and who shall say that there were none on the continent of this school,—occupying prominent positions in the state, heading, it might be, or ranged in opposite factions at Court, who could speak and write in such a manner, upon topics of common interest, as to make themselves entirely intelligible to each other, without exposing themselves to any of the risks, which confidential communications under such circumstances involved.

For there existed a certain mode of expression, originating in some of its more special forms with this particular school, yet not altogether conventional, which enabled those who made use of it to steer clear of the Star Chamber and its sister institution; inasmuch as the terms employed in this mode of communication were not in the more obvious interpretation of them actionable, and to a vulgar, unlearned, or stupid conceit, could hardly be made to appear so. There must be a High Court of Wit, and a Bench of Peers in that estate of the realm, or ever these treasons could be brought to trial. For it was a mode of communication which involved in its more obvious construction the necessary submission to power. It was the instructed ear,—the ear of a school,—which was required to lend to it its more recondite meanings;—it was the ear of that new school in philosophy which had made History the basis of its learning,—which, dealing with principles instead of words, had glanced, not without some nice observation in passing, at their more 'conspicuous' historical 'INSTANCES';—it was the ear of a school which had everywhere the great historical representations and diagrams at its control, and could substitute, without much hindrance, particulars for generals, or generals for particulars, as the case might be; it was the ear of a school intrusted with discretionary power, but trained and practised in the art of using it.

Originally an art of necessity, with practice, in the skilful hands of those who employed it, it came at length to have a charm of its own. In such hands, it became an instrument of literary power, which had not before been conceived of; a medium too of densest ornament, of thick crowding conceits, and nestling beauties, which no style before had ever had depth enough to harbour. It established a new, and more intimate and living relation between the author and his reader,—between the speaker and his audience. There was ever the charm of that secret understanding lending itself to all the effects. It made the reader, or the hearer, participator in the artist's skill, and joint proprietor in the result. The author's own glow must be on his cheek, the author's own flash in his eye, ere that result was possible. The nice point of the skilful pen, the depth of the lurking tone was lost, unless an eye as skilful, or an ear as fine, tracked or waited on it. It gave to the work of the artist, nature's own style;—it gave to works which had the earnest of life and death in them the sport of the 'enigma.'

It is not too much to say, that the works of Raleigh and Bacon, and others whose connection with it is not necessary to specify just here, are written throughout in the language of this school. 'Our glorious Willy'—(it is the gentleman who wrote the 'Faery Queene' who claims him, and his glories, as 'ours'),—'our glorious Willy' was born in it, and knew no other speech. It was that 'Round Table' at which Sir Philip Sydney presided then, that his lurking meanings, his unspeakable audacities first 'set in a roar.' It was there, in the keen encounters of those flashing 'wit combats,' that the weapons of great genius grew so fine. It was there, where the young wits and scholars, fresh from their continental tours, full of the gallant young England of their day,—the Mercutios, the Benedicts, the Birons, the Longuevilles, came together fresh from the Court of Navarre, and smelling of the lore of their foreign 'Academe,' or hot from the battles of continental freedom,—it was there, in those reunions, that our Poet caught those gracious airs of his—those delicate, thick-flowering refinements—those fine impalpable points of courtly breeding—those aristocratic notions that haunt him everywhere. It was there that he picked up his various knowledge of men and manners, his acquaintance with foreign life, his bits of travelled wit, that flash through all. It was there that he heard the clash of arms, and the ocean-storm. And it was there that he learned 'his old ward.' It was there, in the social collisions of that gay young time, with its bold over-flowing humours, that would not be shut in, that he first armed himself with those quips and puns, and lurking conceits, that crowd his earlier style so thickly,—those double, and triple, and quadruple meanings, that stud so closely the lines of his dialogue in the plays which are clearly dated from that era,—the natural artifices of a time like that, when all those new volumes of utterance which the lips were ready to issue, were forbidden on pain of death to be 'extended,' must needs 'be crushed together, infolded within themselves.'

Of course it would be absurd, or it would involve the most profound ignorance of the history of literature in general, to claim that the principle of this invention had its origin here. It had already been in use, in recent and systematic use, in the intercourse of the scholars of the Middle Ages; and its origin is coeval with the origin of letters. The free-masonry of learning is old indeed. It runs its mountain chain of signals through all the ages, and men whom times and kindreds have separated ascend from their week-day toil, and hold their Sabbaths and synods on those heights. They whisper, and listen, and smile, and shake the head at one another; they laugh, and weep, and complain together; they sing their songs of victory in one key. That machinery is so fine, that the scholar can catch across the ages, the smile, or the whisper, which the contemporary tyranny had no instrument firm enough to suppress, or fine enough to detect.

'But for her father sitting still on hie, Did warily still watch the way she went, And eke from far observed with jealous eye, Which way his course the wanton Bregog bent.

Him to deceive, for all his watchful ward, The wily lover did devise this slight. First, into many parts, his stream he shared, That whilst the one was watch'd, the other might

Pass unespide, to meet her by the way. And then besides, those little streams, so broken, He under ground so closely did convey, That of their passage doth appear no token.'

It was the author of the 'Faery Queene,' indeed, his fine, elaborate, fertile genius burthened with its rich treasure, and stimulated to new activity by his poetical alliance with Raleigh, whose splendid invention first made apparent the latent facilities which certain departments of popular literature then offered, for a new and hitherto unparalleled application of this principle. In that prose description of his great Poem which he addresses to Raleigh, the distinct avowal of a double intention in it, the distinction between a particular and general one, the emphasis with which the elements of the ideal name, are discriminated and blended, furnish to the careful reader already some superficial hints, as to the capabilities of such a plan to one at all predisposed to avail himself of them. And, indeed, this Poet's manifest philosophical and historical tendencies, and his avowed view of the comprehension of the Poet's business would have seemed beforehand to require some elbow-room,—some chance for poetic curves and sweeps,—some space for the line of beauty to take its course in, which the sharp angularities, the crooked lines, the blunt bringing up everywhere, of the new philosophic tendency to history would scarcely admit of. There was no breathing space for him, unless he could contrive to fix his poetic platform so high, as to be able to override these restrictions without hindrance.

'For the Poet thrusteth into the midst, even where it most concerneth him, and then recoursing to the things fore-past, and divining of things to come, he maketh a pleasing analysis of ALL.'

And it so happened that his Prince Arthur had dreamed the poet's dream, the hero's dream, the philosopher's dream, the dream that was dreamed of old under the Olive shades, the dream that all our Poets and inspired anticipators of man's perfection and felicity have always been dreaming; but this one 'awakening,' determined that it should be a dream no longer. It was the hour in which the genius of antiquity was reviving; it was the hour in which the poetic inspiration of all the ages was reviving, and arming itself with the knowledge of 'things not dreamt of' by old reformers—that knowledge of nature which is power, which is the true magic. For this new Poet had seen in a vision that same 'excellent beauty' which 'the divine' ones saw of old, and 'the New Atlantis,' the celestial vision of her kingdom; and being also 'ravished with that excellence, and awakening, he determined to seek her out. And so being by Merlin armed, and by Timon thoroughly instructed, he went forth to seek her in Fairy Land.' There was a little band of heroes in that age, a little band of philosophers and poets, secretly bent on that same adventure, sworn to the service of that same Gloriana, though they were fain to wear then the scarf and the device of another Queen on their armour. It is to the prince of this little band—'the prince and mirror of all chivalry'—that this Poet dedicates his poem. But it is Raleigh's device which he adopts in the names he uses, and it is Raleigh who thus shares with Sydney the honour of his dedication.

'In that Faery Queene, I mean,' he says, in his prose description of the Poem addressed to Raleigh, 'in that Faery Queene, I mean Glory in my general intention; but, in my particular, I conceive the most glorious person of our sovereign the Queen, and her kingdom—in Fairy Land.

'And yet, in some places, I do otherwise shadow her. For considering she beareth two persons, one of a most Royal Queen or Empress, the other of a most VIRTUOUS and BEAUTIFUL lady—the latter part I do express in BEL-PHEBE, fashioning her name according to your own most excellent conceit of "Cynthia," Phebe and Cynthia being both names of Diana.' And thus he sings his poetic dedication:—

'To thee, that art the Summer's Nightingale, Thy sovereign goddess's most dear delight, Why do I send this rustic madrigal, That may thy tuneful ear unseason quite? Thou, only fit this argument to write, In whose high thoughts pleasure hath built her bower, And dainty love learn'd sweetly to indite. My rhymes, I know, unsavoury are and soure To taste the streams, which like a golden showre, Flow from thy fruitful head of thy love's praise. Fitter, perhaps, to thunder martial stowre,[Footnote] When thee so list thy tuneful thoughts to raise, Yet till that thou thy poem wilt make known, Let thy fair Cynthia's praises be thus rudely shown.'

[Footnote: 'Shine forth, thou Star of Poets, and with rage Or influence chide, or cheer the drooping stage.'

BEN JONSON.]

'Of me,' says Raleigh, in a response to this obscure partner of his works and arts,—a response not less mysterious, till we have found the solution of it, for it is an enigma.

'Of me no lines are loved, no letters are of price, Of all that speak the English tongue, but those of thy device.'

[It was a 'device' that symbolised all. It was a circle containing the alphabet, or the A B C, and the esoteric meaning of it was 'all in each,' or all in all, the new doctrine of the unity of science (the 'Ideas' of the New 'Academe'). That was the token-name under which a great Book of this Academy was issued.]

It is to Sidney, Raleigh, and the Poet of the 'Faery-Queene,' and the rest of that courtly company of Poets, that the contemporary author in the Art of Poetry alludes, with a special commendation of Raleigh's vein, as the 'most lofty, insolent, and passionate,' when he says,' they have writ excellently well, if their doings could be found out and made public with the rest.'



CHAPTER IV.

RALEIGH'S SCHOOL, CONTINUED.—THE NEW ACADEMY.

EXTRACT FROM A LATER CHAPTER OF RALEIGH'S LIFE.

Oliver. Where will the old Duke live?

Charles. They say he is already in the forest of Arden, and a many merry men with him; and there they live like the old Robin Hood of England: they say many young gentlemen flock to him every day, and fleet the time carelessly as they did in the golden world.

As You Like It.

Stephano [sings]. Flout 'em and skout'em; and skout'em and flout 'em, Thought is free.

Cal. That's not the tune.

[Ariel plays the tune on a tabor and pipe.]

Ste. What is this same?

Trin. This is the tune of our catch, played by—the picture of—Nobody.

But all was not over with him in the old England yet—the present had still its chief tasks for him.

The man who had 'achieved' his greatness, the chief who had made his way through such angry hosts of rivals, and through such formidable social barriers, from his little seat in the Devonshire corner to a place in the state, so commanding, that even the jester, who was the 'Mr. Punch' of that day, conceived it to be within the limits of his prerogative to call attention to it, and that too in 'the presence' itself [See 'the knave' commands 'the queen.'—Tarleton]—a place of command so acknowledged, that even the poet could call him in the ear of England 'her most dear delight'—such a one was not going to give up so easily the game he had been playing here so long. He was not to be foiled with this great flaw in his fortunes even here; and though all his work appeared for the time to be undone, and though the eye that he had fastened on him was 'the eye' that had in it 'twenty thousand deaths.'

It is this patient piecing and renewing of his broken webs, it is this second building up of his position rather than the first, that shows us what he is. One must see what he contrived to make of those 'apartments' in the Tower while he occupied them; what before unimagined conveniencies, and elegancies, and facilities of communication, and means of operation, they began to develop under the searching of his genius: what means of reaching and moving the public mind; what wires that reached to the most secret councils of state appeared to be inlaid in those old walls while he was within them; what springs that commanded even there movements not less striking and anomalous than those which had arrested the critical and admiring attention of Tarleton under the Tudor administration,—movements on that same royal board which Ferdinand and Miranda were seen to be playing on in Prospero's cell when all was done,—one must see what this logician, who was the magician also, contrived to make of the lodging which was at first only 'the cell' of a condemned criminal; what power there was there to foil his antagonists, and crush them too,—if nothing but throwing themselves under the wheels of his advancement would serve their purpose; one must look at all this to see 'what manner of man' this was, what stuff this genius was made of, in whose hearts ideas that had been parted from all antiquities were getting welded here then—welded so firmly that all futurities would not disjoin them, so firmly that thrones, and dominions, and principalities, and powers, and the rulers of the darkness of this world might combine in vain to disjoin them—the ideas whose union was the new 'birth of time.' It is this life in 'the cell'—this game, these masques, this tempest, that the magician will command there—which show us, when all is done, what new stuff of Nature's own this was, in which the new idea of combining 'the part operative' and the part speculative of human life—this new thought of making 'the art and practic part of life the mistress to its theoric' was understood in this scholar's own time (as we learn from the secret traditions of the school) to have had its first germination: this idea which is the idea of the modern learning—the idea of connecting knowledge generally and in a systematic manner with the human conduct—knowledge as distinguished from pre-supposition—the idea which came out afterwards so systematically and comprehensively developed in the works of his great contemporary and partner in arts and learning.

We must look at this, as well as at some other demonstrations of which this time was the witness, to see what new mastership this is that was coming out here so signally in this age in various forms, and in more minds than one; what soul of a new era it was that had laughed, even in the boyhood of its heroes, at old Aristotle on his throne; that had made its youthful games with dramatic impersonations, and caricatures, and travesties of that old book-learning; that in the glory of those youthful spirits—'the spirits of youths, that meant to be of note and began betimes'—it thought itself already competent to laugh down and dethrone with its 'jests'; that had laughed all its days in secret; that had never once lost a chance for a jibe at the philosophy it found in possession of the philosophic chairs—a philosophy which had left so many things in heaven and earth uncompassed in its old futile dreamy abstractions.

Unless philosophy can make a Juliet, Displant a town, reverse a prince's doom, Hang up philosophy,

was the word of the poet of this new school in one of his 'lofty and passionate' moods, at a much earlier stage of this philosophic development. 'See what learning is!' exclaims the Nurse, speaking at that same date from the same dictation, for there is a Friar 'abroad' there already in the action of that play, who is undertaking to bring his learning to bear upon practice, and opening his cell for scientific consultation and ghostly advice on the questions of the play as they happen to arise; and it is his apparent capacity for smoothing, and reconciling, and versifying, not words only, but facts, which commands the Nurse's admiration.

This doctrine of a practical learning, this part operative of the new learning for which the founders of it beg leave to reintegrate the abused term of Natural Magic, referring to the Persians in particular, to indicate the extent of the field which their magical operations are intended ultimately to occupy; this idea, which the master of this school was illustrating now in the Tower so happily, did not originate in the Tower, as we shall see.

The first heirs of this new invention, were full of it. The babbling infancy of this great union of art and learning, whose speech flows in its later works so clear, babbled of nothing else: its Elizabethan savageness, with its first taste of learning on its lips, with its new classic lore yet stumbling in its speech, already, knew nothing else. The very rudest play in all this collection of the school,—left to show us the march of that 'time-bettering age,' the play which offends us most—belongs properly to this collection; contains this secret, which is the Elizabethan secret, and the secret of that art of delivery and tradition which this from the first inevitably created,—yet rude and undeveloped, but there.

We need not go so far, however, as that, in this not pleasant retrospect; for these early plays are not the ones to which the interpreter of this school would choose to refer the reader, for the proof of its claims at present;—these which the faults of youth and the faults of the time conspire to mar: in which the overdoing of the first attempt to hide under a cover suited to the tastes of the Court, or to the yet more faulty tastes of the rabble of an Elizabethan play-house,—the boldest scientific treatment of 'the forbidden questions,' still leaves so much upon the surface of the play that repels the ordinary criticism;—these that were first sent out to bring in the rabble of that age to the scholar's cell, these in which the new science was first brought in, in its slave's costume, with all its native glories shorn, and its eyes put out 'to make sport' for the Tudor—perilous sport!—these first rude essays of a learning not yet master of its unwonted tools, not yet taught how to wear its fetters gracefully, and wreathe them over and make immortal glories of them—still clanking its irons. There is nothing here to detain any criticism not yet instructed in the secret of this Art Union. But the faults are faults of execution merely; the design of the Novura Organum is not more noble, not more clear.

For these works are the works of that same 'school' which the Jesuit thought so dangerous, and calculated to affect unfavourably the morality of the English nation—the school which the Jesuit contrived to bring under suspicion as a school in which doctrines that differed from opinions received on essential points were secretly taught,—contriving to infect with his views on that point the lady who was understood, at that time, to be the only person qualified to reflect on questions of this nature; the school in which Raleigh was asserted to be perverting the minds of young men by teaching them the use of profane anagrams; and it cannot be denied, that anagrams, as well as other 'devices in letters,' were made use of, in involving 'the bolder meanings' contained in writings issued from this school, especially when the scorn with which science regarded the things it found set up for its worship had to be conveyed sometimes in a point or a word. It is a school, whose language might often seem obnoxious to the charge of profanity and other charges of that nature to those who do not understand its aims, to those who do not know that it is from the first a school of Natural Science, whose chief department was that history which makes the basis of the 'living art,' the art of man's living, the essential art of it,—a school in which the use of words was, in fact, more rigorous and scrupulous than it had ever been in any other, in which the use of words is for the first time scientific, and yet, in some respects, more bold and free than in those in which mere words, as words, are supposed to have some inherent virtue and efficacy, some mystic worth and sanctity in them.

This was the learning in which the art of a new age and race first spoke, and many an old foolish, childish, borrowed notion went off like vapour in it at its first word, without any one's ever so much as stopping to observe it, any one whose place was within. It is the school of a criticism much more severe than the criticism which calls its freedom in question. It is a school in which the taking of names in vain in general is strictly forbidden. That is the first commandment of it, and it is a commandment with promise.

The man who sits there in the Tower, now, driving that same 'goose-pen' which he speaks of as such a safe instrument for unfolding practical doctrines, with such patient energy, is not now occupied with the statistics of Noah's Ark, grave as he looks; though that, too, is a subject which his nautical experience and the indomitable bias of his genius as a western man towards calculation in general, together with his notion that the affairs of the world generally, past as well as future, belong properly to his sphere as a man, will require him to take up and examine and report upon, before he will think that his work is done. It is not a chapter in the History of the World which he is composing at present, though that work is there at this moment on the table, and forms the ostensible state-prison work of this convict.

This is the man who made one so long ago in those brilliant 'Round Table' reunions, in which the idea of converting the new belles lettres of that new time, to such grave and politic uses was first suggested; he is the genius of that company, that even in such frolic mad-cap games as Love's Labour's Lost, and the Taming of the Shrew, and Midsummer Night's Dream, could contrive to insert, not the broad farce and burlesque on the old pretentious wordy philosophy and pompous rhetoric it was meant to dethrone only, and not the most perilous secret of the new philosophy, only, but the secret of its organ of delivery and tradition, the secret of its use of letters, the secret of its 'cipher in letters,' and not its 'cipher in words' only, the cipher in which the secret of the authorship of these works was infolded, and in which it was found, but not found in these earlier plays,—plays in which these so perilous secrets are still conveyed in so many involutions, in passages so intricate with quips and puns and worthless trivialities, so uninviting or so marred with their superficial meanings, that no one would think of looking in them for anything of any value. For it is always when some necessary, but not superficial, question of the play is to be considered, that the Clown and the Fool are most in request, for 'there be of them that will themselves laugh to set on some barren spectators to laugh too'; and under cover of that mirth it is, that the grave or witty undertone reaches the ear of the judicious.

It is in the later and more finished works of this school that the key to the secret doctrines of it, which it is the object of this work to furnish, is best found. But the fact, that in the very rudest and most faulty plays in this collection of plays, which form so important a department of the works of this school, which make indeed the noblest tradition, the only adequate tradition, the 'illustrated tradition' of its noblest doctrine—the fact that in the very earliest germ of this new union of 'practic and theoric,' of art and learning, from which we pluck at last Advancements of Learning, and Hamlets, and Lears, and Tempests, and the Novum Organum, already the perilous secret of this union is infolded, already the entire organism that these great fruits and flowers will unfold in such perfection is contained, and clearly traceable,—this is a fact which appeared to require insertion in this history, and not, perhaps, without some illustration.

'It is not amiss to observe,' says the Author of the Advancement of Learning, when at last his great exordium to the science of nature in man, and the art of culture and cure that is based on that science is finished—pausing to observe it, pausing ere he will produce his index to that science, to observe it: 'It is not amiss to observe', he says—(speaking of the operation of culture in general on young minds, so forcible, though unseen, as hardly any length of time, or contention of labour, can countervail it afterwards)—'how small and mean faculties gotten by education, yet when they fall into great men, or great matters, do work great and important effects; whereof we see a notable example in Tacitus, of two stage-players, Percennius and Vibulenus, who, by their faculty of playing, put the Pannonian armies into an extreme tumult and combustion; for, there arising a mutiny among them, upon the death of Augustus Caesar, Blaesus the lieutenant had committed some of the mutineers, which were suddenly rescued; whereupon Vibulenus got to be heard speak [being a stage-player], which he did in this manner.

'"These poor innocent wretches appointed to cruel death, you have restored to behold the light: but who shall restore my brother to me, or life to my brother, that was sent hither in message from the legions of Germany to treat of—THE COMMON CAUSE? And he hath murdered him this last night by some of his fencers and ruffians, that he hath about him for his executioners upon soldiers. The mortalest enemies do not deny burial; when I have performed my last duties to the corpse with kisses, with tears, command me to be slain besides him, so that these, my fellows, for our good meaning and our true hearts to THE LEGION, may have leave to bury us."

'With which speech he put the army into an infinite fury and uproar; whereas, truth was, he had no brother, neither was there any such matter [in that case], but he played it merely as if he had been upon the stage.'

This is the philosopher and stage critic who expresses a decided opinion elsewhere, that 'the play's the thing,' though he finds this kind of writing, too, useful in its way, and for certain purposes; but he is the one who, in speaking of the original differences in the natures and gifts of men, suggests that 'there are a kind of men who can, as it were, divide themselves;' and he does not hesitate to propound it as his deliberate opinion, that a man of wit should have at command a number of styles adapted to different auditors and exigencies; that is, if he expects to accomplish anything with his rhetoric. That is what he makes himself responsible for from his professional chair of learning; but it is the Prince of Denmark, with his remarkable natural faculty of speaking to the point, who says, 'Seneca can not be too heavy, nor Plautus too light, for—[what?]—the law of writ—and—the liberty.' 'These are the only men,' he adds, referring apparently to that tinselled gauded group of servants that stand there awaiting his orders.

'My lord—you played once in the university, you say,' he observes afterwards, addressing himself to that so politic statesmen whose overreaching court plots and performances end for himself so disastrously. 'That did I, my lord,' replies Polonius, 'and was accounted a good actor.' 'And what did you enact?' 'I did enact Julius Caesar. I—was killed i' the Capitol [I]. Brutus killed me.' 'It was a brute part of him [collateral sounds—Elizabethan phonography] to kill so capitol a calf there.—Be the players ready?'(?). [That is the question.]

'While watching the progress of the action at Sadlers' Wells,' says the dramatic critic of the 'Times,' in the criticism of the Comedy of Errors before referred to, directing attention to the juvenile air of the piece, to 'the classic severity in the form of the play,' and 'that baldness of treatment which is a peculiarity of antique comedy'—'while watching the progress of the action at Sadlers' Wells, we may almost fancy we are at St. Peter's College, witnessing the annual performance of the Queen's scholars.' That is not surprising to one acquainted with the history of these plays, though the criticism which involves this kind of observation is not exactly the criticism to which we have been accustomed here. But any one who wishes to see, as a matter of antiquarian curiosity, or for any other purpose, how far from being hampered in the first efforts of his genius with this class of educational associations, that particular individual would naturally have been, in whose unconscious brains this department of the modern learning is supposed to have had its accidental origin,—any one who wishes to see in what direction the antecedents of a person in that station in life would naturally have biased, at that time, his first literary efforts, if, indeed, he had ever so far escaped from the control of circumstances as to master the art of the collocation of letters—any person who has any curiosity whatever on this point is recommended to read in this connection a letter from a professional contemporary of this individual—one who comes to us with unquestionable claims to our respect, inasmuch as he appears to have had some care for the future, and some object in living beyond that of promoting his own immediate private interests and sensuous gratification.

It is a letter of Mr. Edward Alleyn (the founder of Dulwich College), published by the Shakspere Society, to which we are compelled to have recourse for information on this interesting question; inasmuch as that distinguished contemporary and professional rival of his referred to, who occupies at present so large a space in the public eye, as it is believed for the best of reasons, has failed to leave us any specimens of his method of reducing his own personal history to writing, or indeed any demonstration of his appreciation of the art of chirography, in general. He is a person who appears to have given a decided preference to the method of oral communication as a means of effecting his objects. But in reading this truly interesting document from the pen of an Elizabethan player, who has left us a specimen of his use of that instrument usually so much in esteem with men of letters, we must take into account the fact, that this is an exceptional case of culture. It is the case of a player who aspired to distinction, and who had raised himself by the force of his genius above his original social level; it is the case of a player who has been referred to recently as a proof of the position which it was possible for 'a stage player' to attain to under those particular social conditions.

But as this letter is of a specially private and confidential nature, and as this poor player who did care for the future, and who founded with his talents, such as they were, a noble charity, instead of living and dying to himself, is not to blame for his defects of education,—since his acts command our respect, however faulty his attempts at literary expression,—this letter will not be produced here. But whoever has read it, or whoever may chance to read it, in the course of an antiquarian research, will be apt to infer, that whatever educational bias the first efforts of genius subjected to influences of the same kind would naturally betray, the faults charged upon the Comedy of Errors, the leaning to the classics, the taint of St. Peter's College, the tone of the Queen's scholars, are hardly the faults that the instructed critic would look for.

But to ascertain the fact, that the controlling idea of that new learning which the Man in the Tower is illustrating now in so grand and mature a manner, not with his pen only, but with his 'living art,' and with such an entire independence of classic models, is already organically contained in those earlier works on which the classic shell is still visible, it is not necessary to go back to the Westminster play of these new classics, or to the performances of the Queen's Scholars. Plays having a considerable air of maturity, in which the internal freedom of judgment and taste is already absolute, still exhibit on the surface of them this remarkable submission to the ancient forms which are afterwards rejected on principle, and by a rule in the new rhetoric—a rule which the author of the Advancement of Learning is at pains to state very clearly. The wildness of which we hear so much, works itself out upon the surface, and determines the form at length, as these players proceed and grow bolder with their work. A play, second to none in historical interest, invaluable when regarded simply in its relation to the history of this school, one which may be considered, in fact, the Introductory Play of the New School of Learning, is one which exhibits very vividly these striking characteristics of the earlier period. It is one in which the vulgarities of the Play-house are still the cloak of the philosophic subtleties, and incorporated, too, into the philosophic design; and it is one in which the unity of design, that one design which makes the works of this school, from first to last, as the work of one man, is still cramped with those other unities which the doctrines of Dionysus and the mysteries of Eleusis prescribed of old to their interpreters. 'What is the end of study? What is the end of it?' was the word of the New School of Learning. That was its first speech. It was a speech produced with dramatic illustrations, for the purpose of bringing out its significance more fully, for the purpose of pointing the inquiry unmistakeably to those ends of learning which the study of the learned then had not yet comprehended. It is a speech on behalf of a new learning, in which the extant learning is produced on the stage, in its actual historical relation to those 'ends' which the new school conceived to be the true ends of it, which are brought on to the stage in palpable, visible representation, not in allegorical forms, but in instances, 'conspicuous instances,' living specimens, after the manner of this school.

'What is the end of study?' cried the setter forth of this new doctrine, as long before as when lore and love were debating it together in that 'little Academe' that was yet, indeed, to be 'the wonder of the world, still and contemplative in living art.' 'What is the end of study?' cries already the voice of one pacing under these new olives. That was the word of the new school; that was the word of new ages, and these new minds taught of nature—her priests and prophets knew it then, already, 'Let fame that all hunt after in their lives,' they cry—

Live registered upon our brazen tombs, And then grace us in the disgrace of death; When spite of cormorant devouring time, The endeavour of this present breath may buy That honour which shall bate his scythe's keen edge, And make us HEIRS of all eternity—[of ALL]. * * * * * Navarre shall be the wonder of the world, Our Court shall be a little Academe, Still and contemplative in—LIVING art.

This is the Poet of the Woods who is beginning his 'recreations' for us here—the poet who loves so well to take his court gallants in their silks and velvets, and perfumes, and fine court ladies with all their courtly airs and graces, and all the stale conventionalitites that he is sick of, out from under the low roofs of princes into that great palace in which the Queen, whose service he is sworn to, keeps the State. This is the school-master who takes his school all out on holiday excursions into green fields, and woods, and treats them to country merry-makings, and not in sport merely. This is the one that breaks open the cloister, and the close walls that learning had dwelt in till then, and shuts up the musty books, and bids that old droning cease. This is the one that stretches the long drawn aisle and lifts the fretted vault into a grander temple. The Court with all its pomp and retinue, the school with all its pedantries and brazen ignorance, 'High Art' with its new graces, divinity, Mar-texts and all, must 'come hither, come hither,' and 'under the green-wood tree lie with me,' the ding-dong of this philosopher's new learning says, calling his new school together. This is the linguist that will find 'tongues in trees,' and crowd out from the halls of learning the lore of ancient parchments with their verdant classics, their 'truth in beauty dyed.' This is the teacher with whose new alphabet you can find 'sermons in stones, books in the running brooks,' and good,—good—his 'good' the good of the New School, that broader 'good' in every thing. 'The roof of this court is too high to be yours,' says the princess of this out-door scene to the sovereignty that claimed it then.

This is 'great Nature's' Poet and Interpreter, and he takes us always into 'the continent of nature'; but man is his chief end, and that island which his life makes in the universal being is the point to which that Naturalist brings home all his new collections. This is the Poet of the Woods, but man,—man at the summit of his arts, in the perfection of his refinements, is always the creature that he is 'collecting' in them. In his wildest glades, this is still the species that he is busied with. He has brought him there to experiment on him, and that we may see the better what he is. He has brought him there to improve his arts, to reduce his conventional savageness, to re-refine his coarse refinements, not to make a wild-man of him. This is the Poet of the Woods; but he is a woodman, he carries an axe on his shoulder. He will wake a continental forest with it and subdue it, and fill it with his music.

For this is the Poet who cries 'Westward Ho!' But he has not got into the woods yet in this play. He is only on the edge of them as yet. It is under the blue roof of that same dome which is 'too high,' the princess here says, to belong to the pygmy that this Philosopher likes so well to bring out and to measure under that canopy—it is 'out of doors' that this new speech on behalf of a new learning is spoken. But there is a close rim of conventionalities about us still. It is a Park that this audacious proposal is uttered in. But nothing can be more orderly, for it is 'a Park with a Palace in it.' There it is, in the background. If it were the Attic proscenium itself hollowed into the south-east corner of the Acropolis, what more could one ask. But it is the palace of the King of—Navarre, who is the prince of good fellows and the prince of good learning at one and the same time, which makes, in this case, the novelty. 'A Park with a Palace in it' makes the first scene. 'Another part of the same' with the pavilion of a princess and the tents of her Court seen in the distance, makes the second; and the change from one part of this park to another, though we get into the heart of it sometimes, is the utmost license that the rigours of the Greek Drama permit the Poet to think of at present. This criticism on the old learning, this audacious proposal for the new, with all the bold dramatic illustration with which it is enforced, must be managed here under these restrictions. Whatever 'persons' the plot of this drama may require for its evolutions, whatever witnesses and reporters the trial and conviction of the old learning, and the definition of the ground of the new, may require, will have to be induced to cross this park at this particular time, because the form of the new art is not yet emancipated, and the Muse of the Inductive Science cannot stir from the spot to search them out.

However, that does not impair the representation as it is managed. There is a very bold artist here already, with all his deference for the antique. We shall be sure to have all when he is the plotter. The action of this drama is not complicated. The persons of it are few; the characterization is feeble, compared with that of some of the later plays; but that does not hinder or limit the design, and it is all the more apparent for this artistic poverty, anatomically clear; while as yet that perfection of art in which all trace of the structure came so soon to be lost in the beauty of the illustration, is yet wanting; while as yet that art which made of its living instance an intenser life, or which made with its living art a life more living than life itself, was only germinating.

The illustration here, indeed, approaches the allegorical form, in the obtrusive, untempered predominance of the qualities represented, so overdone as to wear the air of a caricature, though the historical combination is still here. These diagrams are alive evidently; they are men, and not allegorical spectres, or toys, though they are 'painted in character.'

The entire representation of the extant learning is dramatically produced on this stage; the germ of the 'new' is here also; and the unoccupied ground of it is marked out here as, in the Advancement of Learning, by the criticism on the deficiences of that which has the field. Here, too, the line of the extant culture,—the narrow indented boundary of the culture that professed to take all is always defining the new,—cutting out the wild not yet visited by the art of man;—only here the criticism is much more lively, because here 'we come to particulars,' a thing which the new philosophy—much insists on; and though this want in learning, and the wildness it leaves, is that which makes tragedies in this method of exhibition; it has its comical aspect also; and this is the laughing and weeping philosopher in one who manages these representations; and in this case it is the comical aspect of the subject that is seized on.

Our diagrams are still coarse here, but they have already the good scientific quality of exhausting the subject. It is the New School that occupies the centre of the piece. Their quarters are in that palace, but the king of it is the Royalty (Raleigh) that founded and endowed this School—that was one of his secret titles,—and under that name he may sometimes be recognized in descriptions and dedications that persons who were not in the secret of the School naturally applied in another quarter, or appropriated to themselves. 'Rex was a surname among the Romans,' says the Interpreter of this School, in a very explanatory passage, 'as well as King is with us.' It is the New School that is under these boughs here, but hardly that as yet.

It is rather the representation of the new classical learning,—the old learning newly revived,—in which the new is germinating. It is that learning in its first effect on the young, enthusiastic, but earnest practical English mind. It is that revival of the old learning, arrested, daguerreotyped at the moment in which the new begins to stir in it, in minds which are going to be the master-minds of ages.

'Common sense' is the word here already. 'Common sense' is the word that this new Academe is convulsed with when the curtain rises. And though it is laughter that you hear there now, sending its merry English peals through those musty, antique walls, as the first ray of that new beam enters them; the muse of the new mysteries has also another mask, and if you will wait a little, you shall hear that tone too. Cries that the old mysteries never caught, lamentations for Adonis not heard before, griefs that Dionysus never knew, shall yet ring out from those walls.

Under that classic dome which still calls itself Platonic, the questions and experiments of the new learning are beginning. These youths are here to represent the new philosophy, which is science, in the act of taking its first step. The subject is presented here in large masses. But this central group, at least, is composed of living men, and not dramatic shadows merely. There are good historical features peering through those masks a little. These youths are full of youthful enthusiasm, and aspiring to the ideal heights of learning in their enthusiasm. But already the practical bias of their genius betrays itself. They are making a practical experiment with the classics, and to their surprise do not find them 'good for life.'

Here is the School, then,—with the classics on trial in the persons of these new school-men. That is the central group. What more do we want? Here is the new and the old already. But this is the old revived—newly revived;—this is the revival of learning in whose stimulus the new is beginning. There is something in the field besides that. There is a 'school-master abroad' yet, that has not been examined. These young men who have resolved themselves in their secret sittings into a committee of the whole, are going to have him up. He will be obliged to come into this park here, and speak his speech in the ear of that English 'common sense,' which is meddling here, for the first time, in a comprehensive manner with things in general; he will have to 'speak out loud and plain,' that these English parents who are sitting here in the theatre, some of 'the wiser sort' of them, at least, may get some hint of what it is that this pedagogue is beating into their children's brains, taking so much of their glorious youth from them—that priceless wealth of nature which none can restore to them,—as the purchase. But this is not all. There is a man who teaches the grown-up children of the parish in which this Park is situated, who happens to live hard by,—a man who professes the care and cure of minds. He, too, has had a summons sent him; there will be no excuse taken; and his examination will proceed at the same time. These two will come into the Park together; and perhaps we shall not be able to detect any very marked difference in their modes of expressing themselves. They are two ordinary, quiet-looking personages enough. There is nothing remarkable in their appearance; their coming here is not forced. There are deer in this Park; and 'book-men' as they are, they have a taste for sport also it seems. Unless you should get a glimpse of the type,—of the unit in their faces—and that shadowy train that the cipher points to,—unless you should observe that their speech is somewhat strongly pronounced for an individual representation—merely glancing at them in passing—you would not, perhaps, suspect who they are. And yet the hints are not wanting; they are very thickly strewn,—the hints which tell you that in these two men all the extant learning, which is in places of trust and authority, is represented; all that is not included in that elegant learning which those students are making sport of in those 'golden books' of theirs, under the trees here now.