what you write fail sometimes in rendering your true meaning?

Shakspeare. Grievously, alas! and yet methinks they often play well too. In writing, however, I strive to make the character appear with sufficient clearness in the dialogue, so that it may not lie altogether at the discretion of looks and gestures.

Bacon. In what esteem hold you the man who enacts Falstaff? Plays he not well?

Shakspeare. Indifferently, my Lord. He lacks the eye of a true jester, and does not speak the wit as if it were his own. Nevertheless, my shafts do not seem entirely blunted by his shooting them, since they are so eagerly waited for by the spectators. As for pregnancy in himself, he has

none.

Bacon. Yet, by giving voice and utterance to your thoughts, he has pleased the Queen to a degree seldom known before. At each time of his reappearance, her Majesty seemed to rejoice as if it had been the coming of a bridegroom, and the ladies of her court failed not to clap their hands. When they saw him fall down in battle at Shrewsbury, they cried out, "Alas! for our sport is ended!" but when he rose again, alive and well, the Queen began to laugh more than ever, and said she would know Falstaff better next time; and asked Essex, who stood behind her chair, if he had any such devices for saving himself at need. After the curtain fell, Essex brought Sir John a purse of angels, which the Queen said he would require, as Mrs Quickly had now pawned all her plate, and could no longer support him in his debaucheries.

Shakspeare. Does your Lordship sometimes honour these scenic pastimes with your presence?

Bacon. To say the truth, I have more frequently read your plays than seen them acted. Look round this narrow closet, Mr Shakspeare. Behold these rows of books, in which are marshalled various samples of men's wisdom and folly. Here is the theatre which I love most to visit, although it be not always for sport or relaxation. This table is a stage, upon which these grave doctors sometimes descend to play their pranks, until I grow weary, and cut short their logic by flapping their leaves together. These pens are what once served them for swords and

daggers; and this wax is like the human understanding, which they have run into a mould, and stamped with the head of Aristotle.

Shakspeare. Touching that matter I have the advantage of your Lordship. I care not whose head they stamp it with, or what doctrines and opinions are current; for, so long as men are born with the same passions and dispositions, the world will furnish the same handles to the tragedian. Therefore, while my Lord Verulam is vexing his brain with subtle questions, William Shakspeare lives with little thought, except it be to gather fresh fuel for his fancy. To the poet who has a ready-going pen, there needs not inuch painful preparative, since his best impressions are often got in the midst of idleness and sport.

Bacon. I am told that you do not invent the plots of your own plays, but generally borrow them from some common book of stories, such as Bocaccio's Decameron, or Cynthio's Novels. That practice must save a great expenditure of thought and contri

vance.

Shakspeare. It does, my Lord. I lack patience to invent the whole from the foundation.

Bacon. If I guess aright, there is nothing so hard and troublesome as the invention of coherent incidents; and yet, methinks, after it is accomplished, it does not shew so high a strain of wit as that which paints separate characters and objects well. Dexterity would achieve the making of a plot better than genius, which delights not so much in tracing a curious connexion among events, as in adorning a phantasy with bright colours, and eking it out with suitable appendages. Homer's plot hangs but ill together. It is indeed no better than a string of popular fables and superstitions, caught up from among the Greeks; and I believe that they who, in the time of Pisistratus, collected his poem, did more than himself to digest its particulars. praise must therefore be found in this, that he reconceived, amplified, and set forth, what was but dimly and poorly conceived by common men.

His

Shakspeare. My knowledge of the tongues is but small, on which account I have read ancient authors mostly at second hand. I remember, when I first came to London, and began to be

a hanger-on at the theatres, a great desire grew in me for more learning than had fallen to my share at Stratford; but fickleness and impatience, and the bewilderment caused by new objects, dispersed that wish into empty air. Ah, my Lord, you cannot conceive what a strange thing it was for so impressible a rustic, to find himself turned loose in the midst of Babel. My faculties wrought to such a degree, that I was in a dream all day long. My bent was not then toward comedy, for most objects seemed noble, and of much consideration. The music at the theatre ravished my young heart; and amidst the goodly company of spectators, I beheld, afar off, with dazzled sight, beauties who, seemed to outparagon Cleopatra of Egypt. Some of these primitive fooleries were afterwards woven into Romeo and Juliet.

Bacon. Your Julius Cæsar and your Richard the Third please me better. From my youth upward I have had a brain politic and discriminative, and less prone to marvelling and dreaming than to scrutiny. Some part of my juvenile time was spent at the court of France, with our ambassador, Sir Amias Paulet; and, to speak the truth, although I was surrounded by many dames of high birth and rare beauty, I carried oftener Machiavelli in my pocket than a book of madrigals, and heeded not although these wantons made sport of my grave and scholarlike demeanour. When they would draw me forth to an encounter of their wit, I paid them off with flatteries, till they forgot their aim in thinking of themselves. Michael Angelo said of Painting, that she was jealous, and required the whole man, undivided. I was aware how much more truly the same thing might be said of Philosophy, and therefore cared not how much the ruddy complexion of my youth was sullied over the midnight lamp, or my outward comeliness sacrificed to my inward advancement. Shakspeare. The student's brain is fed at the expense of his body; and I suspect that human nature is like a Frenchman's lace;—there is not enough of it to be pulled out both at the neck and the sleeves.

Bacon. What you observe is in part true. Yet if we look back upon ancient times we shall find exceptions. Plato's body was as large and beautiful as that of any unthinking Greek; and so VOL. III.

also was the body of Pythagoras, whom men had almost deified for his conjunct perfection of mind and person. To mention Alcibiades, Epaminondas, Cæsar, and others, would be unseasonable; since, although these men had ability enough for the great advancement of their own or their country's fortunes, the same portion might have gone but a small way toward the extension of knowledge in general. But here we touch upon the distinction between understanding and those energies which are necessary for the conduct of affairs.

Shakspeare. Speaking of bodily habitudes, is it true that your lordship swoons whenever the moon is eclipsed, even though unaware of what is then passing in the heavens?

Bacon. No more true, than that the moon eclipses whenever I swoon. Shakspeare. I had it from your chaplain, my lord.

Bacon. My chaplain is a worthy man; he has so great a veneration for me, that he wishes to find marvels in the common accidents of my life.

Shakspeare. The same chaplain also told me, that a certain arch in Trinity College, Cambridge, would stand until a greater man than your lordship should pass through it.

Bacon. Did you ever pass through it, Mr Shakspeare?

Shakspeare. No, my lord. I never was at Cambridge.

Bacon. Then we cannot yet decide which of us two is the greater man. I am told that most of the professors there pass under the arch without fear, which indeed shews a wise contempt of the superstition.

Shakspeare. I rejoice to think that the world is yet to have a greater man than your lordship, since the arch must fall at last.

Bacon. You say well, Mr Shakspeare; and, now, if you will follow me into another chamber, I shall shew you the Queen's Book of Sonnets; which, not to commend up to the stars, would shew much blindness and want of judgment. Her Majesty is a great princess, and must be well aware of the versatility of her own parts, which fit her no less for a seat among the Muses, than to fill the throne of her

ancestors.

Shakspeare. Were her Majesty to listen to all that might be spoken of her good gifts, she would find the

2 M

days too short for expeding any other business. The most her subjects can do with their praise is, to thrust it upon her by snatches; and, as Jupiter is said to have had a small trapdoor in heaven, through which, when open, ascended the foolish prayers and vows of mankind, so might her Majesty's presence-room be provided with a golden funnel for receiving the incense of those innumerable worshippers, whose hearts are full of her, although their quality enables them not to approach her person.

Bacon. Walk this way, Mr Shakspeare. The Queen's book is not to be found among ordinary classics.

No VI.

JOHNSON'S MIDNIGHT WALK. Scene-the Streets of London. Savage. Mr Johnson, I must insist upon your going home to your lodgings.

Johnson. No, sir; I had as leif walk with you, and chat with you.

Savage. Your complaisance carries you too far. Necessity has accustomed me to pass the night in this manner. But you have a lodging, and need not encounter these hardships.

Johnson. A man, sir, takes a pleasure in tasting the diversities of life, when he knows it is in his option whether he shall do so or not.

Savage. Your frame is robust. You will catch no harm, at any rate, from your present whim.

Johnson. Why, sir, I love occasionally to aberrate from routine. It awakens and varies my ideas. The streets are almost silent just now. These large and opaque masses of building have nothing in their exterior to set the mind a-going; but they affect us, sir, because we know them to be pregnant with the workings of the human heart, from the cellar to the garret. There is no time when mankind so distinctly feel their happiness or misery, as before retiring to sleep. Action being then suspended, they have time to estimate its results, and to calculate what remains to be enjoyed or suffered.

Savage. Damn calculation! Damn it-ah!

Johnson. I have never yet been so situated as to-(I will not repeat your expression,) but I have never yet been

so situated as to wish to have done with calculation.

Savage. Mr Johnson, you know what I once was. Is it wonderful that I should swear? Johnson. This is a painful topic, and an old one between us.

I

Savage. Well, let us wave it. have some verses in my pocket which I composed this morning, and wrote on the back of a play-bill with a pen which I procured in a grocer's shop. If these lamps were not so dim, you should hear them read.

Johnson. The ancients said of Love, that he had been cradled on rocks, and suckled by tigers.

Savage. What of that?

Johnson. It is astonishing under what unfavourable circumstances poetical enthusiasm, which is one of the finest movements of the soul, will sometimes thrive and fructify. I do not much wonder at Cervantes having written Don Quixote in prison; for it would appear that the assembling of humorous conceptions is a harsh and hardy operation of the mind, and not liable to interruption from slight inconveniences. We find humour among men, whom the rigours of their situation have entirely blunted to tenderness. Take, for instance, sailors and highwaymen.

Savage. What do you suppose to be the hardiest of all faculties?

Johnson. That of ratiocination, sir. But it requires to be supported. When I lived, as at one time I was obliged to do, upon four pence a-day, I experienced frequent defalcation of mental activity.

Savage. Starvation may enfeeble the faculties, but in me it leaves the passions as active as ever. It leaves me still the same proud and incontrollable Richard Savage.

Johnson. Nature has probably ordered things in such a manner, that our personal energies shall be the last to suffer from bodily exhaustion. In many cases the intellectual faculties may be considered as mere superfluities; while, on the other hand, the personal energies are requisite to the last in our intercourse with human society, even although they should have some ill-directed tendencies, as I fear is the case with yours.

Savage. I will permit you to say so, Mr Johnson, for I know you are my friend.

Johnson. After dinner, sir, I generally feel inclined to meditation. Reading is then less agreeable to me, because of the trouble of holding the book to my eyes.

Savage. When do you dine? Johnson. Generally at three. Savage. Heigho! you are a happy man. You will one day do credit to literature, when poor Savage

Johnson. Nay, sir, do not speak thus. I am but a harmless drudge, a word-hunter-little worthy of being envied. He that deludes his imagination with golden dreams of the dignity of literature, need only enter the garret of the lexicographer, and see him at his diurnal task, to be convinced that learning is honoured only in its results, and not in the person of the possessor.

Savage. Have you visited my Lord Chesterfield lately?

Johnson. Why, no, sir. I found that I was kept waiting for hours in the anti-chamber, while his Lordship was engaged with such persons as Cibber.

Savage. D-n him. Stupid scoundrel! Fellows like that get on well wherever they go.

Johnson. And what if they do, sir? They are more gainly, sir, than we, because they are meaner. You are to consider that their progress is purchased by the loss of what we think one of the greatest luxuries in life, namely, the habit of following the wayward impulses of personal inclination. Sir, the man who approaches people like Chesterfield must not have any humours of his own. Now, sir, I am not one of those who can clear their foreheads, and look pleasant whenever occasion requires. I love to be as sour as I please. Mea virtute me involvo.

Savage. But surely Lord Chesterfield ought to make some distinction between

Johnson. Chesterfield, I believe, does as we ourselves would do in his situation. He knows what it is to be a courtier, and he expects to be court ed in his turn, for whatever he has to give.

Savage. Learning and worth oughtJohnson. Nay, sir, do not talk stuff. Learning and worth may pace the streets, and reflect on their own merits till they are weary, but the world has other matters to think of. Personal

qualities do not rise in society, unless their possessor has the art of making them subservient to the wants of others. A man who appears at Vanity Fair, with a species of merchandise which every person can do without, will only be laughed at if he gives himself airs.

Savage. Who lies here?-Some one sleeping upon a bulk. Poor fellow ! his coat appears to have seen better days. His hat has dropped off, and may perhaps become the prey of some light-fingered passenger. Shall I awaken him?

Johnson. Is it an author?

Savage. I am uncertain. He does not seem to be a drunkard; for he breathes quite freely. I rather think it is an author.

Johnson. Do you know the individual?

Savage. I believe it is a Mr Andrew Carmichael, a young man from Scotland, author of an elegant little poem, entitled the Woes of Genius.

Johnson. Nay, sir, if he is from Scotland, let him lie.

Savage. The poor young man will lose his hat.

Johnson. Sir, a Scotchman has no need of a hat. It only supplies warmth and stimulus to the seat of knavery.

Savage. If you will allow me to make you acquainted with this gentleman, you will find his conversation well calculated to remove these prepossessions. Ho! friend; get up. Don't you recollect Savage ?-Ah, Derrick! is it you?

Derrick. For whom did you take

michael.

me? Savage. For the poor lad CarThe Woes of Genius, you Derrick. You need not look for him. He is off the list.

know.

Savage. How? What say you? Derrick. Tucked himself up the other morning. 'Tis a shocking story; but he was desperate. He was originally a tutor in a Scottish family, where he gave so little satisfaction, that he was turned off, and came to London full of authorship. When he first arrived, he used to dine at a shilling chop-house. By degrees, however, he came down to a sixpenny one, and then to a fourpenny one. Afterwards he became irregular, and lived only when he could. In the meantime, his