Bacon and Shakespeare.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 322, 5 December 1888, Page 4

Bacon and Shakespeare.

Bacon's misfortunes were brought upon himself by his own sins only. Shakespeare had trials and probably he had himself chiefly to blame for them. But generous weakness, not deliberate self-seeking, was the cause of Shakespeare's troubles, so iai* as we know them. Bacon's misfortunes are known to the world, and even those who most admire his work would never think of suggesting that they were the fruits of undue generosity. Bacon was unquestionably mean. He j was ctafty in his manners. He actually ! used his own condemnation to a fine as a protecting mortgage auair.sfc hK creditors. I All that we know of Shakespeai-e shows that though ho had money trials, and had occasion Lo work hard for money, he wotked for others rather than for himself. He te!ca«>ud Ut ■> father fro* a money difficulties, enabled both his father and mother to weather comfortably well their money troubles before he began Lo lay up such \no\ i^ion for hirf wife and hwiis as seemed to him d» .sirable and just. Bacon was profound ; Suako^woare preeminently lurid Scarce any e\on of the admitted difhcilues in Shake.-.) >oat«'& plays arc worth Iroibling about. nnt some misprint 01 «i 'me mfaundcr?landii',! by prinleus, a >i ihey are mo;t ou&ceptiblo n\ ready in 1 ci flirtation. But in pah«ugtt< who-c nut hentieily i-» clear, how beautiful ;ui' hi- wiiitK--o\'L'n after a rune in those j,n- .'l'/i'-.' who o the contused thoughts of ai. c* i il.H'i have In be pi esentod in confuted u (.i u • .V man who should begin to reason in c ! blood, a^ ' Macbeth ' reasoned when h"> \L'i!is were full ot murder — ' [f 'twere done when 'tia done, then 'twere vrell it ucii' done quickly. It the assassination could catch with his surcease success, that but this deed mijxht be the be-all and the aiid-ali here,' etc., would &eem as contused as Cromwell appears in his speeches and in many of his. letters to those who cannot put themselves in some degree in Cromwell's place. But ' Macbeth V soliloquy as * Macbeth ' reads as easily as the Lord's prayer. Weteelovery utterance is justwhab a ' Macbeth ' would give venc to, though not one of us could have found the words which came from a £ Macbeth ' as naturally as poison from the deadly night shade. Bacon's prose is the most condensed and in some respects the strongest English yet known. His poetry was tor the most pare, rubbish. ' Man's life hang?.' says lie in his poetry, ' on brittle pins !' and he tells us of the great Leviathan That makes the &eas to sccth liko boiling pan I And though some linos in his poetiy are fine, these are enough to show that as a poet he is of the Emersonian type, not knowing shillings from guineas, or false from good money. Shakespeare's poetry rises not once, but shores of times, above the highest ot all the poets our British race has known ; noi ib the piose far behind it. Try ' Brutus' ' speech in the third act of 'Julius Ciesar 1 by any of the rules for gauging English prose. It will not bo found wanting.