LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. DEC 12 1892. 189 . 'ckus No. I STUDIES AT LEISUBE the 0nme JUthcrr. STUDIES NEW AND OLD. 1888. LIFE OF JOHN STUART MILL (Great Writers Series). 1889. CONSTRUCTIVE ETHICS. 1886. STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 1881. THE METAPHYSICS OF JOHN STUART MILL, 1879. STUDIES AT LEISURE BY W. L. COURTNEY, M.A., LL.D. FELLOW OF NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD LONDON : CHAPMAN AND HALL, LD. 1892 [All rights reserved] RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED, LONDON Marlowe's friend and patron. THOMAS NASH, dramatist \ THOMAS LODGE, poet > friends of Marlowe. EDWARD ALLETN, actor ) HENRY CHETTLE, a literary man. FRANCIS ARCHER, landlord of ' Red Lion ' Inn at Deptford. NAN, Archer's housekeeper. SCENE. 'Red Lion' Inn at Deptford. Parlour with sanded floor. NAN discovered laying table and making preparations for a meal as the curtain rises. ' Come, live with me and be my love! ^ c -> i sung as a quartette behind stage. NAN laying table and bustling about while music is going on. She sighs from time to time, and goes finally to window and draws back curtain, looking out on a moonlit scene, TIME. Evening of June 1, 1593. Enter FRANCIS ARCHER (the landlord of the Inn). Archer. Why, how now, Nan, is everything ready for our guests ? A noisy crew they will be, I warrant ay, and a quarrelsome one before the night is out ! cv B 2 STUDIES AT LEISUKE. Nan (sighing). Ay, Master Archer. (She still looks out of window, and does not turn round?) Archer. Master Archer ! Master Archer ! How many times am I to tell thee, girl, that to thee I am not Master Archer, but plain Francis Francis, an' it please you, that loveth thee with as true and honest a love as ever man gave to a maid ? Is it moonlight to-night, Nan? Nan. Yes, Master Archer. Archer. Master Archer again ! Why, sweet Nan, bonny Nan, know you not that moonlight is made for lovers ? (coining close to her.) And that thou and I are very like to be betrothed to-night ? (she turns away and goes back to table; he follows?) Didst thou not promise, girl, that it should be even so ? Didst thou not swear to me that to-night, after the clock had struck midnight, thou wouldst give me a fair and straightforward answer, ay or nay ? Knowest thou not that since my late wife died (God rest her soul !) I have favoured no other maid, but only thee? I grant you that my late venture was no profitable one. But thou, Nan, wilt make more than amends for all I have suffered ; and thy bright eye will clear my bosom of all the perilous stuff of anger and petulance which have harboured there these many years past. Shall it not be so, Nan ? Didst thou not make the promise I have said ? Nan. Yes, Master Archer, I have promised; but (as he comes still nearer^ and tries to take her hand) after midnight, and not before. KIT MARLOWE'S DEATH. 3 Archer. Nay, Nan, I understand thee well enow. But thy coldness disconcerts me. Art thou coy, lass, with me, that hath loved thee these many months ? Art thou afeard of me, that would take thee to his breast, like a frightened and timorous bird ? Dost thou not know me, child? (He at last gets possession of her hand, lut she still keeps her eyes turned away from him.) Is it something else, Nan, that keeps thee from me ? (fiercely.) What is it ? Who is it ? Thou shalt tell me, Nan; ay, even if I tear thy secret from out thy lips! Nan. Nay, Mr. Archer; I have nought to tell. Let me go (bursts into tears). Archer. Now, by all the saints in heaven, I will know ! Who is it? I ask thee again. It cannot be that one of the gentry hath spoken soft things in thine ear ? Thou wouldst never dare lift thine eyes so high. Who is it, girl ? (roughly) Some simple swain, to whom thou hast plighted thy troth long ago, before thou becamest housekeeper in my service, and to whom thou yet feelest thyself bound ? God's blood, but I am worth more than so clumsy a hind ! No ? Who then ? Not one of these mad players and playwrights, who go over the whole face of the earth in paint and powder, cozening the face which Heaven hath given them into the likeness of knave or hero, God or devil? Ah! have I touched thee there ? Then was I a thousand times right in asking their worshipful vagrancies here, and watching their wild antics with thee. Which is it, Nan ? for God 4 STUDIES AT LEISURE. is my witness, know I will, and that soon. Is it that wild tragedy villain, Alleyn, who hath debased himself into all the sins of Tamburlaine so they tell me ay, and even hath given himself a false nose and red hair, and masqueraded as Barabas, a Jew of Malta? or is it that whimpering Chettle ? or the cold, sneering Nash ? or may God confound him is it that handsome, careless, devil-may-care Kit Marlowe, with his saucy manners and his sparkling eyes, who hath taken the whole town by storm ? Nan, is it Kit ? God in heaven ! not Marlowe ! Speak, girl, speak ! Nan (with face averted, and frightened). Let me alone, Mr. Archer ; nay, but I will not be thus harried by thee ! Let me alone, I say ! Have I not promised thee that I will give thee my answer to-night ? Will not that content thee ? Archer. Content me, no nor any other man, who feeleth the devil's own jealousy within him, as I do. Tell me fairly and openly, Nan, is it Marlowe ? (with a change of manner.) Thou wilt not be hard-hearted, Nan ; thou wilt not be so unkind to one who hath loved thee and would fain cherish thee all the years of thy life ? Say, Nan, thou wilt tell me, wilt thou not ? Nan (crying). Nay, nay, nay, I cannot ; leave me go, leave me go, Master Archer. See, how thy rude hand hath hurt my wrist ! Unmannerly ! Archer. Unmannerly, sayest thou ? And what of thee, who hast led me on from week to week and from month to month with the ever-deferred promise that thou wilt KIT MARLOWE'S DEATH. 5 be mine ? Is that unmannerly ? What of thyself, who hast played with so wanton a lightness on my heart's strings till, as thou knowest full well, I have no thought but of thee ; and then, when the happiness of thy possession seemed at last to be within my reach, thou fliest off after some new fancy some fresh young light- o'-love, no sooner seen than desired ? Is that unmannerly ? Heaven's truth ! Speak not to me of unmannerliness, when thou canst thus throw off an old friend ! Nan. Indeed, indeed, Mr. Archer, thou knowest that I have always respected and and liked thee well enow. Archer (bitterly). Liked ! Respected ! And when some beggarly young scapegrace of an actor and playwright, some son of a cobbler, who hath already lamed himself in his wild riots on the stage, and earned a fame at ' the Curtain' which should be the shame of honest men; who hath disgraced the mother that bare him and the learned colleges which have brought him up; who is notorious for his quarrels and his cups, ay, and his mistresses; who Nan (breaking in). Thou shalt not thus wrong Mr. Marlowe. I will not listen to thee. He hath ever been kind of heart and open of hand to all who have been in sorrow or in need. Why, only yester-even Archer. Ah ! it is Marlowe, then ! (fiercely.) 'Fore God, Nan, thou and he shall live to repent this ! What, it is he then that hath caught this silly, fluttering bird who hath taken all the gloss off thy butterfly wings ! And I well, I may go hang where and when it listeth me.! But it 6 STUDIES AT LEISURE. shall not be so, Nan ! I swear it on my oath ! He shall never hold thee in his arms as I am holding thee now (clasps her). This very night Enter LODGE, NASH; ALLEYX, CHETTLE, SIR THOMAS WALSIXGHAM. NASH holding a paper, over which they are all laughing immoderately, with the ex- ception of CHETTLE. ARCHER leaves NAN, who escapes out of the room, and turning with a low low [Exit NAN. Your servant, gentlemen all ! Lodge. Good even, Master Francis. Servant, be it ; and look you, we be thirsty souls ; therefore serve us with some wine, and be quick about it ; and we be hungry souls, look you, therefore serve us with that same supper which thou wottest of; and hurry thy legs about that too! Archer (obsequious). Certes, gentlemen. Your appetites and your thirst shall not exceed my nimbleness. Ye shall be served with a supper which hath been these ten minutes awaiting you. Sir Thomas Walsingham. Who was that comely wench, who so incontinently fled our coming ? Methinks, if we are to be served by her hands, we shall not do amiss, please God. Archer. It's my housekeeper, my lord. Sir Thomas. Housekeeper, villain ! She is young enough to be thy daughter. Lodge (laughing). " Young enough and fair enough and KIT MARLOWE'S DEATH. 7 free enough to cheat thee ! " Aha, Sir Thomas, thine eye is ever for the wenches ! At thine age, too ! Sir Thomas. Well, well, the supper and thy house- keeper, Archer especially the housekeeper ! [Exit ARCHER. Alleyn. And now for the dying will and testament, friend Nash. Out with it; let us all hear thee, and let those who have galled withers wince ! I care not, I. But who would have thought our old friend Robin Greene would have made such an ending? Chettle (rubbing his hands). Ay, ay, he was a kindly man was Robin Greene. A kindly man and a thoughtful a rare writer of plays and a rare critic of his friends ! Lodge. Peace, thou sallow-faced weasel, and let thy betters speak. Nash (reading from Greene's ' Groatsworth of Wit Bought ly a Million of Repentance'). "To those gentlemen his quondam acquaintance that spend their wits in mak- ing playes, R. G. wisheth a better exercise, and wisdom to prevent his extremities." Lodge. Poor friend Robin ! He died hard, so it is reported. Chettle. Nay, gentlemen, peace. Let us hear him. Nash (reading). " If woful experience may move you, gentlemen, to beware, or unheard-of wretchedness intreat you to take heed, I doubt not but you will look back with sorrow on your time past, and endeavour with repentance to spend that which is to come." Alleyn. Is not this brave ? A rare preacher, say I ! 8 STUDIES AT LEISURE. Nash (reading). " Wonder not (for with thee will I first begin), thou famous gracer of tragedians " Alleyn. Kit Marlowe ! Kit Marlowe ! Sir Thomas. 'Twere best he speak no ill of Marlowe in my presence. What does the graceless villain say of Marlowe ? CJiettle. Peace, peace, gentlemen. I pray you listen. Nash (reading). "Why should thy excellent wit be so blinded that thou shouldst give no glory to the Giver ? Is it pestilent Machiavellian policy that thou hast studied ? O, peevish folly ! " Nay, friends, is not this infamous ? I will not sully my tongue with such dying venom. Hardly a year in his grave, and to leave such a legacy ! I would that Kit were here to hear himself bespattered ! CJiettle. Nay, but proceed, Master Nash. There is much sound wit and judgment in what is to come. Nash. Proceed ? Not I. Is it thou, thou white-faced loon, that hast given this pestilent rubbish to the world ? Alleyn. Ay, Chettle, art thou the editor ? Chettle. Gentlemen, gentlemen, I pray you be just to me. I have all the time of my knowledge of books hin- dered, so far as it hath lain with me, the bitter inveighing against scholars, and how in that I have dealt I can suffi- ciently prove. As for this Marlowe, I am not acquainted with him, and I care not if I never be. Sir Thomas. Well, then, if thou carest to have a whole skin, the sooner thou departest the better for thee. Do I hear Kit's voice ? [MARLOWE'S voice heard without, singing. KIT MARLOWE'S DEATH. 9 Nash. Ay, begone with thee, Chettle ! If thou givest such rubbish as this to honest men, beware their resent- ment ! Alleyn. Out with thee, thou knavish purveyor of malice ! [As they threaten, CHETTLE slinks out L. From door E. NAN comes in with tankards and wine. From door 0. enter MARLOWE, flushed, and as he comes in he sings : And saw you not my Nan to-day ? My winsome maid have you not seen ? My pretty Nan is gone away To seek her love upon the green. As he comes down he sees NAN, and puts his arm round her waist and draws her to him. ARCHER, luho has followed NAN with dishes, sees the act.] Marlowe (seating himself at table). Well, comrades, how goeth it with you ? Be ye merry, and I will give you a stave. But an' ye be mournful, I am not of your company (looking after NAN, who has gone out, and sings) My pretty Nan is gone away To seek her love upon the green. Sir Thomas. Thou art come in time, friend Kit, for this varlet Archer hath been like to upset the pasty on my lap, so overjoyed is he at thy coming. (To ARCHER) Sirrah^ wilt thou put the dish down and be gone ? Come, thou tragic histrio, Alleyn, repeat to him some of thy deep- mouthed verses to frighten him ! 10 STUDIES AT LEISURE. Alleyn (with tragedy air). "Holla, ye pampered jades of Asia!" (They all laugh) Marlowe. Nay, nay, Tom Nash loveth not " the drum- ming decasyllabon," eh, Tom ? " The swelling bombast of a bragging blank verse," eh, Tom ? But, my worthy sirs, though I see many cups, yet there is to my mind a miser- able paucity of contents. Friend Archer, wilt thou not remove that sullen face of thine, and let thy Nan come in to replenish our emptiness ? [ARCHER goes out sullenly. Sir Thomas. Who is this Nan, Kit ? Marlowe (carelessly}. Nan? She is what Archer calls his housekeeper, is she not ? Sir Thomas. Ay, ay, we know that well enough. But canst thou tell us no more of her than what we know already ? Did not my ears catch some ribald lines which thou wert repeating in her honour, and did not my eyes see thy tender salutation ? Marlowe (laughing). Each one to his own, say I ! Nay, in all seriousness, gentlemen, she is a small chit that hath much helped to relieve my dulness in this village while the plague is raging in the town. I did her, or her mother, some small kindness : I forget which it was, or what it was ; and she hath in return done me the great kindness of living in Deptford, whereby I have something whereon to feast my weary eyes. (NAN comes in with more wine.) Hast thou not, Nan? Nan (shyly). I know not, Mr. Marlowe, what thou sayest. Marlowe (as she fills his cup). Well, Nan, thou shalt KIT MAELOWE'S DEATH. 11 give my cup the benison of thy lips. Drink to me, lass. Nay, I insist. (She touches the cup with her lips ; MARLOWE drains it down.) 'Fore Heaven, 'tis nectar now. " A lass and a glass," saith the wise man. And now, Nan, go thy ways, my bonny girl ; for we hard drinkers are not meet company for thee. Go thy ways, lass; go! (She goes out.) Nash. Confound thee, Kit ; thou always hast the devil's own luck. Marlowe. Which is more than I can say for thee, Tom, when thou writest in the company of Robin Greene and decriest thy learned friends as " idiot art-masters " ! (The others laugh at NASH'S expense.) But what was the business over which ye all looked so grave as I entered ? It was a thirsty business, I'll be bound, or all the cups would not have been so empty ! Nash. We were reading Greene's testament, wherein, to his shame, he hath said so many hard words of thee. Marlowe,. So hast thou, Tom, in thy time, so hast thou ! Nay, deny it not, man, nor think that it angereth me a jot. Dame Nature hath given me a tough hide. Sir Thomas. And a tender heart. Marlowe. That shall be as it may be. But read on, Nash, read on. I would fain have some savoury morsel wherewith to flavour my cup. Nash (reading). "Defer not till the last point of ex- tremity " he is speaking of thee, Kit " for little knowest thou how in the end thou shalt be visited." Marlowe. Like enough ! like enough ! Unvisited, 12 STUDIES AT LEISURE. unwept for, and alone ! (This in a half-aside, with almost a serious air.) Nash (continuing). "With thee I join young Juvenal, that biting satirist. Sweet boy, might I advise thee, be advised, and get not many enemies by bitter words." He must mean thee, Tom Lodge. Lodge. No. Am I not a gentleman of Lincoln's Inn, and a Master of Arts? Marlowe. Ay, a better Master of Arts than thou art a Doctor of Divinity ! But he means not Tom Lodge, but Tom Nash. Have we not all suffered from his biting satires ? Nash. I care not, whether it be I or he. But here is a worthier passage. Listen, sirs, and tell me whether even poor crazy Robin Greene speaketh not sometimes to the point (reads) : " There is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you, and being an absolute Johannes-factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake- scene in a country." Aha, methinks he hath taken off our young deer-stealer to a nicety ! Sir Thomas. Ay, that is the proper sauce wherewith to serve so eminent a gosling ! Lodge. Bravo, Robin ! Thou canst be young Juvenal too, when it liketh thee ! Marlowe (starting up). Now, 'fore Heaven, I think ye be too uncharitable ! I care not what he saith of me or any of you, but no man shall speak thus in my presence of young Will Shakespeare. KIT MARLOWE'S DEATH. 13 Sir Thomas. Wliy, Kit, they say he is like to be thy rival ! Marlowe. Rival, sayest thou ? Nay, mistake me not. He is not my rival, nor any man's. I tell ye all that when we are lying in our graves, there will be one man who will be living in men's mouths Will Shakespeare ! When men have forgotten the very names we bore, when all that we have written becomes like letters on the sand or the water there is one name they will never forget Will Shakespeare! Ye talk of me and of my mighty line; what is all that I have penned, weighed in the balances against Will Shakespeare ? Why, gentlemen, he is but in the first blush of his spring, and mayhap none of us shall see his summer, but I tell ye that there are thoughts of his and words which he hath written which ring in my ears like the divinest music, which cross the dull and muddy air we breathe like lightning flashes of Heaven's own blinding radiance ! I say nothing of the man himself, how gentle he is and how modest, compared to our noisy crew, and with how simple a life he is for ever rebuking our mad escapades ; but if this speech be my last, I will bear testimony to the finest mind and purest genius that ever blest our English tongue with inimitable jewels of language and thought ay, the one man who, if fate so will that our dear England be conquered by some foreign foe and sink into obscurity and nothingness, will for ever redeem our race and the common name we bear because Will Shakespeare was an Englishman ! (MARLOWE sinks down on his seat.) x^*l 0? THE 14 STUDIES AT LEISURE. (A pause?) Sir Thomas. Why, how now, Kit, this is tragedy indeed ! Marlowe (wearily). Ay, ay, mayhap I am something over-wrought to-night. Give me more to drink. Is it true that men have sometimes a strange feeling that their end is nigh, and that all their work is over ? Pshaw, this is woman's weakness ! Nash. Come, come, Kit. Tell us of thyself. Hast thou been doing aught that is noteworthy ? Marlowe (brightening). Something here and there, by fits and starts, as is my wont. Rememberest thou the tragedy of Dido and those young school-boy essays of mistranslating Virgil ? Well, Tom, there is work in that for thee. The work tires me somewhat. Wilt thou take it in hand ? Nash. Ay, that I will, and welcome. Right proud am I to be thy helper. Alleyn. But hast thou nothing for me ? I would fain have something to study that is thine some character to take the town, when this cursed plague is over. Hast thou no new Barabas? Thus like the sad-presaging raven that tolls The sick man's passport in her hollow beak, And in the shadow of the silent night Doth shake contagion from her sable wings Hast thou nothing like that, now ? Marlowe (smiling). Maybe I have, and thou, my Alleyn, shalt be my interpreter. Lodge. What is it ? May we know ? KIT MARLOWE'S DEATH. 15 Marlowe. What say ye, gentlemen, to a new character ? A man who hath something in him of Tamburlaine, and here and there a likeness to thy friend (to ALLEYN) Barabas ? Nash. Perchance, too, there is a touch of Faustus ? Marlowe. Nay, nay, there is only one Faustus ! Alleyn. And his name, Kit, his name ? Marlowe. Hebrew, sirs, Hebrew. The Hebrews have all the vices and the intelligence of our time. Nay, now I bethink me, I have made him a Moor. Alleyn. But his name, Kit, his name ! Marlowe. Art thou not forward in thy haste ? His name is Aaron. Wouldst thou hear somewhat of his speech ? Well, give me a brimming cup to baptize my latest offspring. (They pour out wine in his cup, which he swallows.) Again, lads, again. Aaron is a name somewhat dry in the mouth, methinks. (MARLOWE pulls a MS. out of his pocket and reads from the play of ' Titus Andronicus.') [NAN steals in and listens by the door. As when the golden sun salutes the morn, And having gilt the ocean with his beams, Gallops the zodiac in his glistering coach And overlooks the highest-peering hills nay, it is sorry stuff. Nash. Marlowe's line, nathless. Alleyn. More, more, I pray thee. Marlowe (turns over a few pages, and reads) Madam, though Venus govern your desires, Saturn is dominator over mine ; 16 STUDIES AT LEISURE. "What signifies my deadly-standing eye, My silence and my cloudy melancholy ? My fleece of woolly hair that now uncurls Even as an adder, when she doth unroll To do some fatal execution ? Vengeance is in my heart death in my hand, Blood and revenge are hammering in my head. Lodge. " Deadly-standing eye " is good. Marlowe. Good, quotha? Nay, I am sick of it. Oh that I had the grace of Will Shakespeare to fashion my hard verses to smoothest melody ! I care not if I never finish it. (Seeing NAN, who has been listening with rapt attention) Ah, Nan, art thou there ? Leave me, gentlemen, I pray you. I fear I am not so lightsome in my heart as you would desire. Leave me. Nash. Leave you ? Not I. Alley n. Nor I. Marlowe. I pray you, do. Sir Thomas. What, shall we humour him ? Then give us thy new play to amuse ourselves withal. (He gives his MS) But we will return anon, Kit. Thou graceless villain, are we to leave thee all the sweets? Well, gentlemen, come. [Exeunt SIR THOMAS, NASH, LODGE, and ALLEYS. MARLOWE is left with NAN. Marlowe. Come hither, sweet. Hast thou been here all the time, and I saw thee not ? Nan. Nay, I only came when I heard the sound of thy voice. Thou knowest that it rings like music in my ears. KIT MAELOWE'S DEATH. 17 Marlowe. A harsh note, Nan, believe me. There is no music in my composition. Some force, maybe, and fervour, some gift of high-sounding words which these lads, that are my friends, do not attain unto. But no music, Nan I would there were ! no unearthly melody like that which haunts the least words of Will Shake- speare. But why talk I thus to thee ? Come nearer and comfort me, lass, for I feel strangely sick at heart. Nan. Art thou ill, dear master ? Marlowe. 111? No, only moody and dispirited. No matter, let us drink. Nan. No, no (putting away his glass). I do not like thee in thy company vein. I like thee by thyself, as when we sometimes walk through the great solemn woods, and see the shadows of the tall trees on the grass, and hear the birds sing in the meadows. Ah, thou hast been a kind friend to me ! Marlowe. No, lass, no. 'Tis thou rather that has been kind to me. See here, sweet, I am but young in years. What is my age ? 'Tis barely thirty, but methinks I have lived too long. I have seen too much, or else I have lived through my allotted space too fast. Whatever it be, I am all aweary of the world, and thy Kit Marlowe is an old man before his time. My life hath withered up my heart. Nan. Nay, now, I know that thou speakest falsely. Hast thou no heart, thinkest thou, when thou canst turn out of thy way to be kind to a poor country lass like me? When thou savedst my mother's life with thy 18 STUDIES AT LEISURE. timely gifts and still more kindly words, dost think thou hadst no heart ? Ah. Master Marlowe, I know thee better. Marlowe. No more of that, I pray you. Come, let us be merry, and talk of love, and laugh at death and old age. Thou art a bonny child, Nan, and 'fore Heaven I love thee well ! (Draws her to him and kisses ?ier.) Drink, lass, drink ! Life is all glorious when we drink ! Nan. When dost thou go away ? Marloive. What talk is this of going away? W T hy, Nan, have I infected thee with my dull spirits? Maybe, I shall never go away. Nan. What do you mean ? Marlowe. God's truth, I know not. What a strange life is this of ours, when ever and anon there come visitings from another world when in the heyday of life there is the sudden shadow cast across our path Why do I talk thus to thee ? Drink, girl, drink ! Nan. Art thou ill ? Marlowe (inusing). Is there another world ? And is all that we see and feel and touch the mere semblance of a dream which shall roll away, and leave us bare and naked before some dread Reality ? I had a strange vision last night. Nan. Tell me, kind master. I would fain kno\v all thy thoughts. Marlowe. I believe thou wouldst, for I have ever found in thee, although that thou art but a village child, some touch of poesy. Ay, let me tell thee. But let me feel KIT MAKLOWE'S DEATH. 19 thy warm touch about my face ; let me link thy arms about me. (He puts her arms round his neck, she cn 7 y half resisting.) Listen, child. Methought I was in some large plain, and before me there was a mountain which bounded the horizon, and it seemed that I must needs climb the ascent. And though the way was steep, and I could see others fainting by my side, to me it was an easy and delightful task to climb the lower bases of the mountain. And then, as I rose, I found that the mountain divided itself into twin peaks one of them all rocky and precipitous, and the other slowly rising from the day into some wondrous region of cloud and mist. And a voice said, " Choose which thou wilt climb." And I said to myself, "Let me choose the steep and arduous peak; the other only requireth patience, and surely all men can attain to it." (Putting her from him and rising.) So I climbed up the precipices, and my foot was light and my hands were strong: nor could aught prevent my eager haste, till I placed myself at last on the cold, stony top of the hill I had chosen. And when I laid myself down to rest, of a sudden there was a thunder, and I heard a pealing cry, " Live thou on thy peak alone." And the clouds that rested on the other summit were swept aside for a moment, and I saw that it was immeasurably higher than mine. And again the awful voice, " Thou hast chosen ill." Nay, child, I have frightened thee with my fancies. Nan (slowly). When dost thou go away ? Marlowe. Again that question ? Why, Nan, how 20 STUDIES AT LEISURE. unkind tliou art to me in thus harping upon my going. When do I go away? Mayhap in a month, or a day, or never. Dost thou love me, lass ? Xan. Oh, do not ask ! Marlowe. But thou must say, lass thou must say. Dost thou love me ? Nan (shyly). Thou knowest that I do. Hast thou not been all kindness and tenderness to me ? Marlowe. I know not. Maybe I have been unkind, for in certain ways, methinks, I have deceived thee. I would not have thee mistake me, Nan. Think not that love the mere love of man for maid can ever sway my heart. It is not so; I have a love within me a passionate love, which nought can assuage ; but it is not an earthly love. They call me 'atheist/ do they not? Nan. Ay, sir ; I have heard so. Marlowe. Atheist; ay, so says Richard Bame. But it is not true at least, not true save in their narrow sense. I have an unearthly love about me for something to which I can give no name. It is a haunting passion, an aspiration for that which hath never been, nor ever yet will be : a mad feverish thirst for the grand, the divine, the impossible. There is for ever hovering in my restless head One thought, one grace, one wonder, at the least Which into words no virtue can digest. Why (laughirtg) what a sorry knave am I, that must KIT MARLOWE'S DEATH. 21 needs quote my own words, like some poor prating parrot ! Dost love me, Nan ? Nan. I love thee. Marlowe. Love me not, love me not ! I only love my art. Nan. Ah but nay, why shouldst thou care what my lot may be ? Marlcnue. What is thy lot, Nan ? Nan. I have promised Francis Archer that I will marry him. Marlowe. Marry Francis Archer ? What, Last thou promised? No, 'fore God, thou shalt not marry him; thou shalt marry me. S'blood, I am sick of the town life. I will stay here with thee. Wilt thou marry me, Nan ? Nan. Ah mock me not ! Marloice. Mock thee ? riot I ! Marry Francis Archer ? Never ! Never ! Come, marry thee I will, willy nilly. When shall it be ? To-morrow ? To-night ? (getting excited) In sober truth, I will leave the world and live with thee. I will marry thee now. Where is the priest ? Nan. Nay, thou knowest that there is no priest here. Marlowe. No priest ? Nay, the ceremony shall be now. (Going to the door, wildly.) Here, Nash, Lodge, Alley n, come in, all of you. (They enter.) Come in, come in and be my witnesses in a solemn act of betrothal ! Nash. What mad prank is this ? Marloive. Nay, I am in sober earnest, or I shall be with one more cup of wine. Come and be my witnesses. 22 STUDIES AT LEISURE. Lodge. "Is this the face that launched a thousand ships" ? (pointing to NAX.) Marlowe,. Ay, and a pretty one, too ! Come, thou tragedy-monger, Ned Alleyn, and be my priest. Alleyn. Thy priest, Kit ? Marlowe,. Ay, art thou not an actor ? which in good high-sounding Greek means a hypocrite. Priest, actor, hypocrite, 'tis all one ! Come, marry us. (He seizes NAN and forces her down on Tier knees, with himself in front of ALLEYN, the others laughing?) Enter ARCHER. He steps appalled, then rushes forward. Archer. Sirs, sirs, what mean ye by this foolery ? Let the girl go ! Nash. Why, how now, thou moody knave ! Nay, we must have no brawlers in church. (Seizes him, and attempts to push him to the door. They struggle?) Marlowe. Thou insolent varlet ! What, thou art going to marry Nan, art thou ? Nay, let me get at him (to LODGE and ALLEYN, who stop and attempt to keep him lack}. Nay, I will turn him out of doors. 'Fore Heaven, I will murder him ! Let me get at him, the drunken fool ! [MARLOWE, struggling with LODGE and ALLEYN, gets at last to NASH, who is struggling with ARCHER. As they struggle the table is overturned, and ARCHER gets hold of a knife on the floor, which has lieen upset from the table. As MARLOWE at last gets to him, throwing off his friends, ARCHER stabs MARLOWE to the heart. KIT MARLOWE'S DEATH. 23 Archer. Take that, thou vile seducer ! [MARLOWE gets away the knife after a struggle, and holds it over ARCHER, then sinks lack, and the knife falls on the floor. The others rush up to him, and ARCHER escapes from the room. Alleyn. Kit, Kit, look up, lad. Thou art not hurt ? Marlowe. Hurt? Ay, past surgery. Nan, art thou there ? (She comes forward, trembling, and lifts his head on her knee.) Lend me thy kerchief, lass, to staunch this bleeding. It is draining my life. Look cheerily, lass, 'tis all one; and if it is not to-day, then it will be to-morrow. Nay, nay, weep not, child. Thou kriowest I would have married thee ? Nan. Ay, my dear lord (weeping). Marlowe. Well, then, I am thy husband. Fare thee well ! Come, come, gentlemen, eye me not so sadly. Ye will grieve, it may be, for a time, and anon ye will be merry again. 'Tis all one. Lodge. Let some one go and arrest the murderer. Marlowe. Nay, let him go. He thought I had wronged him. Alleyn. Oh, Kit, Kit ! Thou wilt not die and leave us ? Marlowe. Needs must, sirs, when fate calls. Poor Kit Marlowe ! 'Tis a sorry ending to a sorry life ! Well, it would have come hereafter. " water, gentle friends, to cool my thirst ! " (His head sinks down.) Nash. Is he gone ? (They press some water to his lips.) Marlowe. Nay, there is yet a flicker ere the light goes out. But ah, my plays, my plays ! When comes another 24 STUDIES AT LEISURE. Tamburlaine ? "Will men write another * Faustus ' ? And my ' Hero and Leander ' ! I pray ye to ask George Chapman to end it for me ; but when ? when ? And men will judge me only by what I have written. Poor, poor Kit Marlowe ! (His head sinks again.) Alleyn. Nay, Kit, thy memory shall be dear to us. Marlowe (starting up). Is it e'en so ? Nay, nay, come not, Lucifer ! " See where Christ's blood streams in the firmament!" Ah, ah ! (shrieks. Recovering). Nay, friends, look not so terrified. It is but Faustus that speaks. Will they remember me, think you, in the after days ? Will they speak kindly of poor, wild Kit Marlowe ? " Weep not for Mortimer, that scorns the world, and as a traveller goes to discover countries yet unknown." Oh, God ! God ! will death never come ? I am but what I am a poor fro ward boy, who hath shipwrecked his life on the sharp rocks of circumstance and fate. The fool hath said in his heart (dies). Alleyn (solemnly) Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight, And burned is Apollo's laurel bough. [ ' Come, live with me,' sung or played softly, as the curtain descends.] SLOW CURTAIN. 25 IBSEN'S SOCIAL DRAMAS. THE curious interest which the dramas of Henrik Ibsen have excited in London and even in Paris is a phenomenon worthy of study. Possibly it does not admit of a single interpretation, but is due to a combination of different causes. If we take into account the alleged fact that in Norway itself there is a certain amount of scepticism as to Ibsen's pretensions, while in England there has been formed a school of Ibsenites as fervent, and as blind in their admiration, as the societies which clustered round Browning, we come across the familiar principle that^even in literature our taste is as much guided by contrast as it is by affinity. We like what we understand and are familiar with, but our curiosity is more readily piqued by what we do not understand and what strikes us as strange. In Norway, a country which is struggling to develop a literature of its own, men instinctively turn to the older literatures of England, France, and Germany, as presenting them with a maturity and a disciplined skill which they recognize as the somewhat distant goal of their own efforts. In the midst of an older civilization an exactly 26 STUDIES AT LEISURE. opposite feeling is often prevalent. We experience a pleasant piquancy in literatures that were only born yester- day ; there are amongst us critics who seem to rate the novels of Tolstoi and Dostoieffsky above those of Thackeray and Balzac; and the work that is relatively crude and immature is estimated out of all proportion to its real value. There may be ' some of this feeling at the bottom of the admiration for Ibsen, as it undoubtedly accounts for the unstinted praise often given to Walt Whitman. But there are other causes at work more intimately connected with the stage and dramatic writing. We are told that the burden of conventionalism is slowly stifling theatrical productiveness ; and when a strong and master spirit, who knows nothing about our conventions and our stereotyped formulae, comes out with dramas full of refreshing novelty and vigour, it is a sign that our older species of com- position has had its day and that a new era is dawning. The assertion may or may not be true, but the mere fact that it is made, accounts for the eagerness with which Ibsen's dramas are scrutinized as the harbingers of a theatrical revolution. To this must be added the old controversy which in so many forms has appeared throughout the whole course of literature, and which in our day we call the antagonism between Idealism and Naturalism. Should art give us the glory which never was on sea or land, or should its humbler function be to present us with the real ? Are the ' documents' of its activity those old and familiar functions which we call imaginative force, the constructive power of IBSEN'S SOCIAL DRAMAS. 27 genius, the dream of fancy, the intuitive insight of intellect; or a much more prosaic piece of industry, the accumulations of actual experience, the daily note-taking of a fearless and analytical inquisitiveness ? There can be no doubt on which side are to be found the so-called representatives of the modern spirit. Browning gives us this realistic temper at its best not untouched by the graces of idealistic fancy. At its worst we have not far to look. Shall it be Tolstoi with his ' Kreutzer Sonata ' ? or Zola with his ' La Terre' ? or Ibsen with his ' Ghosts' and his ' Hedda Gabler ' ? To speak of * the modern spirit ' is no doubt a vague and misleading phrase. But we shall probably not be far wrong if we include in its current signification at least these three elements Naturalism naked and unashamed, a vigorous though crude uncon- ventionality both of phrase and literary workmanship, and a profound belief in the necessity of democracy, the triumph of science, and the emancipation of woman. Ibsen, at all events, has some of these features, though he adds to them characteristics of his own. If we take a play like ' The Young Men's League/ it appears that, while he too tends towards the recognition of the inevitableness of democracy, he preserves the attitude of the critic or the cynic, and has a very shrewd suspicion of the kind of leader which democracies will probably develop. If we turn to ' Ghosts/ it is seen that he accepts to the full the interpretations of Science, and with a perfectly merciless hand reveals the doctrine of Heredity as applied to the family circle. Probably it is hardly necessary to say that 28 STUDIES AT LEISURE. he paints the emancipation of woman to those who have seen the recent representations of his ' Doll's House/ for the Nora who deserts her husband and children, and bangs the front door behind her as the curtain descends, is the woman who has recognized that her first duty is the cultivation of her own individuality. Perhaps we should say that Ibsen is indeed ' modern ' in these senses together with that equally characteristic note of modernity, a scepticism of the very ideas which he is promulgating. He wishes to educe the individual, and yet he shows to what repulsive lengths the individualistic craze can be carried. He fears and hates socialism and the tyranny of the majority, which after all are the logical results of triumphant democracy. He would free the woman, and yet shows how unlovely the unshackled woman can become. He welcomes the revelations of science, while he points out what havoc they make of such ideas as Conscience, Responsibility, and Freedom of the Will. And through all the scenes which he puts before our eyes, he paints without shame, or fear, or literary reserve, in full com- pliance with the dictates of that Realism, whose boast it sometimes appears to be that the real is the monotonously The peculiarity, however, of Ibsen as a writer, as well as thinker, a peculiarity which adds much to the normal difficulty of estimating a foreigner and a contemporary, is that he combines the susceptibility to modern ideas with a literary form which is in many respects crude and immature. This is not a criticism which will appeal to IBSEN'S SOCIAL DRAMAS. 29 the Ibsenite school, nor is it here advanced with any confident dogmatism. But the problem with which we are face to face is so perplexing, that we are almost forced to offer it as at all events a plausible solution. On the one hand we have to acknowledge a freshness and piquancy in the way in which Ibsen advances his ideas, and a consequent attractiveness in the dramas which seems to increase with repeated perusal : and yet, on the other hand, there is a constant source of irritation both in the treatment of his themes and the various devices by_ which he seeks to reveal his characters. It is easy to illustrate by concrete examples, and we need go no further than the notorious ' Doll's Hxmse.' No one who has seen it on the stage would deny that in some fashion the play grows upon the spectator: unexpected points of interest start up, new lights are thrown on the personages, fresh elucidations occur to the mind of what the author is driving at. Nevertheless, on the whole, we are more piqued than pleased : we find fault with the denouement, and are mentally reconstructing a better ending : we get to hate the fatuous husband, Torvald Helmer ; and here and there in the long conversations we are appalled with the sudden Metises such as the incident about the silk stockings in the dialogue between Dr. Bank and Nora, and the incredible vulgarity of the talk about oysters and champagne. It is obvious that just this union of piquancy and bad taste is what is so often met with in the work of some precociously clever young man : it is the very ' note ' of juvenility. Or else, if the expression be preferred, we 30 STUDIES AT LEISURE. stigmatize it as 'provincial,' the work not of the centre but of the circumference, not metropolitan but surburban. And indeed the whole of the mise en sc&ne of an Ibsenite drama is entirely surburban the pseudo-culture of the women, the vain bumptiousness of the men, the astonish- ing frankness of the language, the grasping eagerness to parade the latest scientific idea. It gives us just the impression of the Chicago lady ' dizzy on education/ or of the man nearer home who liked to call agricultural imple- ments by their proper name. But instead of being conjoined with feeble intellectual power, we have it here thrown down before us with marvellous vigour and a real grasp of essential elements, recalling in its general effect that sudden alternation of darkness and light which in some latitudes is due to the absence of a soft, pervading, mellowing twilight. Ibsen plunges us at once from brilli- ance into gloom : there are no stealing shadows, no tender penumbra, no gentle gradations through gold and orange and violet. The crudity of literary form is more easily perceptible on a larger scale. It is not a mere matter of incidents and language, but it affects to a considerable extent the whole dramatic construction. What, for instance, is the indis- pensable element of drama ? The evolution of character through action. When Browning's ' Strafford ' was acted on the stage, it was remarked that we did not know Charles's minister any better in the fifth act than we did in the first. Something of the same kind is to be found in Ibsen's dramas. The prominent character, for instance, IBSEN'S SOCIAL DRAMAS. 31 in ' The Young Men's League ' is a young lawyer, named Stensgard, whose label of vulgar democrat, attaching to him when the curtain rises, equally adheres to him when it de- scends. But his peculiarities can hardly be said to have developed before our eyes : we do not get to know him any better, as we do the characters of Shakespeare. He is a Dickens-like personage who exists to manifest a certain quality, not a real person whom we can imagine living and active in other circumstances than those in which his creator has for the time placed him. It is unnecessary to cite other instances, because this want of development in character is the natural result of a peculiarity of Ibsen's dramatic construction, which we are often told to admire. Like Euripides in some of his plays, Ibsen is fond of an analytical method. The successive acts are devoted to the analysis of all that is involved in a given situation which was realized before the curtain ascends. Nora Helmer in the ' Doll's House ' has already forged her father's name before the action commences : Dr. Stockmann in the ' Enemy of Society' has already discovered that the vaunted baths of his town are impregnated with possible disease and death at the very opening of the first act. It follows that the ensuing scenes must be devoted to the drawing out of the consequences of a realized catastrophe ; they must render explicit what is already implicit in the situation with which we open. No one has any right to object to an analytical method, although it is obvious that it is the characteristic rather of a philosophic essay than of a drama. 'Hamlet' might quite correctly be described as an analytical 32 STUDIES AT LEISURE. play. But there is one condition which must not be foregone. If there is to be no real development by action, there must be at least an emotional development. Sometimes Ibsen realizes this, and then we get to know his characters. Sometimes he does not, and then we feel towards his work as we do towards some of the work of Euripides. We can, however, excuse the Greek dramatist, because he was not always concerned to paint flesh and blood, but artificially heightened figures with masks on. Ibsen's characters want to be flesh and blood, but the dramatist's method sometimes checks their legitimate aspirations. There is, for instance, often to be found among the dramatis personce a conventional figure by the side of the heroine, a middle-aged friend, half cynic, half lover, and wholly a man of the world, such as Doctor Rank by the side of Nora in the 'Doll's House,' Pastor Manders by the side of Mrs. Alving in ' Ghosts/ and Judge Brack by the side of Mrs. Tesman in ' Hedda Gabler.' Even if it be admitted that such personages are not drawn in a conventional way, their appearance seems to argue a certain fondness for more or less conventional types. To these points ought obviously to be added Ibsen's didacticism. That this tendency has to be adverted to, is not so much the fault of his critics as it is of his admirers. Probably every artist has reason to pray to be delivered not only from his friends, but from the school who look up to him and call him 'master.' For where the founder leaves the outlines somewhat indistinct and blurred, the disciple with patient assiduity fills in with decisive strokes IBSEN'S SOCIAL DRAMAS. 33 and adds body and substance to what may after all be a pure exercise of fancy. Directly, however, 'the purpose' and 'the moral' become doubly and trebly em- phasized, the value of the work of art is gone; it is no longer a piece of dramatic portraiture, but a sermon, an apologue, a fable. An artist need not be without a moral, but by the very conditions of his nature he ought not to be tied down to one moral rather he ought to be as many-sided and as capable of yielding different morals, as life itself. In Ibsen's case there seems to have been a distinct period of his life when he formally assumed the role of a preacher, and gave up that of a poet. The outward and visible sign was the adoption of prose and the abandonment of verse ; the inward motive was a fine scorn of his countrymen and of the customs and ordinances of Norwegian society. 'Semper ego auditor tantum,' he seems to have said, and then composed one drama after another to expose the hollowness of provincial respectability, the insincerity of customary ethics, the poverty of connubial lives, proving with equal emphasis the bitterness of his retaliatory ardour and his Timon-like abhorrence of all ordinary social ideals. So far as Ibsen was thus consciously didactic, he may have been a consum- mate preacher, but he was an immature dramatist. But it is easy to exaggerate this tendency, as indeed is proved by those emancipated women who have gushed over the 'moral' of Nora Helmer's daring act of freedom. It appears to be almost necessary to rescue the dramatist from the embarrassing enthusiasm of his admirers and to 34 STUDIES AT LEISURE. point out that the conclusion of ' The Lady of the Sea ' seems to suggest, as we shall soon have occasion to remark, a perfectly different moral. Moreover, it seems to be clear that Ibsen himself has done his best to rid himself of the obvious drawbacks of the didactic method; in 'Rosmers- holm/ in ' The Lady of the Sea,' in ' Hedda Gabler,' he no longer preaches a moral, or if he does, it is by no means so plain and explicit as his worshippers would desire. Hence, there may be confusion in the ranks of f the school,' but there is, at least, a perfectly satisfactory intimation, that, if ever the character of prophet suited the dramatist, it was a mark of immaturity, from which he desires to be free. It would be difficult to see how an artist could feel otherwise. He must gain for himself, at whatever cost, freedom to study character from any point of view he pleases, and even though an Ibsenite society should find its occupation gone, ' impavidum ferient ruinae.' It is time, however, to turn from generalizations and look more narrowly at the man himself and at some of his most characteristic productions ; and it is obviously necessary to concentrate our attention especially on those dramas which are best known and have made most sen- sation in England. It ought to be remembered, however, that Ibsen, as a literary genius has other claims on our study than those to which we propose to advert. He commenced life by being a poet, and it would be quite an arguable position that his contributions to the poetry of his native land are at least as valuable as his later plays. It is very significant, however, that at a particular IBSEN'S SOCIAL DRAMAS. 35 period of his life he should have deliberately abandoned such inclinations as he felt towards the poetic career. He has chosen the vehicle of prose partly because he can more immediately appeal to all classes of society, partly also, it may be presumed, because the choice indicates a determined effort to become a reformer, or at all events a critic of those institutions of society which in his opinion are imprisoning the modern spirit; partly again, because prose suits the Realist. We have no space to take up the earlier career, but the briefest of facts may conduce to clearness, and some attempt must be made to suggest the personality of the man of whom we are speaking. Henrik Ibsen was born on the 20fch of March, 1828, in Norway, and lived there until 1864. The latter date coincides with the German aggression on Denmark, when it was for some time thought that England ought for various reasons to come to the help of the over-mastered country. Ibsen, in his distress that Norway and Sweden would not help Denmark to resist Prussia, as well as for other causes, shook the dust off his feet, deserted his own native land, and since then has mainly been resident in Rome, Munich, and Dresden, producing on an average a drama every two years. He was at an earlier period appointed artistic director of the Norwegian theatre at Christiania, and gained some actual experience of stage work. We need not be concerned with the elaborate reasons which some of his biographers have found for explaining Ibsen by his historical antecedents 36 STUDIES AT LEISURE. and by the character of his Scotch and Norwegian ancestry. Let us take the man as his friends have described him a rather short but very vigorous and impressive personality. He has a peculiarly broad and high forehead, with small keen eyes, blue-gray in hue, of a quality which his sympathizers describe as penetrat- ing to the heart of things. His long gray hair and his whiskers make him look more like a surgeon than a poet and dramatist ; but the signs of strength are to be found not only in his forehead, but in his firm and compressed mouth, and it is probably for various adequate reasons that he has been called the man of iron will. He certainly has no look of the characteristic artist's face, there is nothing in him of the vague, questioning, aesthetic wistful- ness which we sometimes associate with the artistic nature. He would probably consider himself, on the contrary, entirely practical practical, that is to say, not in the popular, but in the philosophic sense, a man who attempts to diagnose the evil of society and to expose the causes of its corruption. In entire accordance with this role of speculative thinker we find that he is unusually reserved and silent, a man who propounds his social riddles somewhere about Christmas, leaves the busy tribe of scribblers and critics to attempt to discover their meaning, and shuts himself up for two years without communication with kith and kin until a new puzzle is ready. If we turn to his dramatic work, we shall find in the first place a certain set of historical and legendary dramas : a youthful ' Catilina/ written in 1850, revised IBSEN'S SOCIAL DRAMAS. 37 at a later period ; a melodramatic play, ' Lady Inger of Ostraat/ 1855 ; historical studies, such as the ' Warriors at Helgoland/ 'The Pretenders,' and above all 'Emperor and Galilasan/ a play which by itself deserves a separate study. It is worthy of remark that in it he looks forward to a period which is to succeed the two periods, first of Paganism, and second of Christianity, a period which is to resolve all the riddles of this painful earth in a new era which shall recognize the rights of the individual mm. Then we find another class of dramatic poems, for instance, ' Love's Comedy,' and the two celebrated poems 'Brand ' and ' Peer Gynt/ in 1866-67. It is the third class, however, with which we have to deal the so-called social dramas, commencing with ' The Young Men's League/ in 1869, and continuing with 'The Pillars of Society/ 1877, 'A Doll's House/ 1879, 'Ghosts/ 1881, 'An Enemy of Society/ 1882, 'The Wild Duck/ 1884, 'Rosmersholm/ 1886, ' The Lady of the Sea/ two years later, and finally the play which has lately been published both at Copenhagen and in London, ' Hedda Gabler/ Ibsen's New Year's gift to his admirers. It is of course impossible for us to review all the dramas in this recent group. It will be only necessary to take a few of those which may justly be reckoned characteristic, and characteristic especially of those three leading ideas which have before been referred to as animating a great deal of Ibsen's work first, the revolt against society side by side with the criticism of the democratic state ; secondly, the influence of scientific ideas, 33 STUDIES AT LEISURE. especially of heredity ; and thirdly, the position of woman in the social state. Under the first of these heads ouo-ht O to be placed, disregarding the historical order, ' The Young Men's League/ ' An Enemy of Society/ and ' The Pillars of Society/ A good representative of the second will be found in 'Ghosts'; while the third division will include the ' Doll's House/ ' Bosmersholm/ ' The Lady of the Sea/ and ' Hedda Gabler ' ; to only some of which we shall have space to refer. ' An Enemy of Society ' is by no means a bad example to commence with, because the central figure, Dr. Stock - mann, not inaptly represents certain phases in Ibsen's own character. Dr. Stockmann is the successful doctor of a [Norwegian watering-place, possessing the advantage of certain baths, to the popularity of which the doctor himself has largely contributed. He has an elder brother, Peter Stockmann, a burgomaster, a prefect of police, a Chairman of the Board of Directors in short, a municipal official of the ordinary type. Dr. Stockmann discovers that the baths, of which he is medical officer, are con- taminated, and that the numerous visitors who come to the town in search of health are likely to be poisoned slowly but surely by the so-called salubrious waters. He is determined to set himself right with the society in which he lives by proclaiming his discovery. Need it be said that his chief and earliest enemy is the official supporter of things as they are, his own brother, the burgomaster? In him is typified all that passive ac- quiescence in the usual, the ordinary, and the common- IBSEN'S SOCIAL DRAMAS. 39 place, which is the wonted characteristic of civic authority, but which, in this instance, is aggravated by the reasonable fear of doing damage to the town and alienating the influential patronage of visitors. Side by side with these two personages the radical scientist and the conservative mouthpiece of Bumbledom are to be found an editor of a newspaper, a prominent member of the journalistic staff, and a master printer. The newspaper, of course, adopts the policy of prudence, of waiting upon events, of 'the jumping cat.' It does not desire to originate any definite policy that would be too dangerous but to reserve its advocacy until it sees what policy is likely to be successful. When it thought that it would best secure its interests by supporting Dr. Stockmann, its editor is a friend and guest of the doctor : when it discovers that on the whole its best chances of sal- vation are to be found on the side of respectability and obtuseness, it goes over to the party in power, as represented by the municipal authority of the burgo- master. The result of the struggle between the enlightened man, who not only knows which way his duty lies but also resolutely strives to perform it, and the dense and compact majority of his fellow-burghers, is exactly what might be expected. Dr. Stockmann is called an enemy of society; his proposed contributions to the newspaper are rejected ; he is hardly allowed even to make his case known, and were it not for the friendship of a ship's captain, who lends him his house, he would have had 40 STUDIES AT LEISURE. no chance of a public interview with his countrymen. When the opportunity of an address is vouchsafed to him, however, he loses no time in declaring his mind without hesitation or reserve. It is the one strong and just man against the many ' who are mostly fools.' We have in consequence a most powerful and characteristic speech, which represents, it may fairly he assumed, some of the opinions of Ibsen himself. The points which Dr. Stockmann makes are important for our purpose, because they indicate that note of extravagance and of violent over-emphasis, which every moralist, whatever may be the vehicle of his diatribes, whether drama or essay, apparently of necessity adopts, but which, at the same time, are essentially the marks not of literature but of the platform and the hustings. The majority, we are told, is so far from being generally in the right that it is never in the right : most of the accepted truths, whether of religion or practical life, when they grow old, cease to be truths and become lies, because they no longer suit the requirements of a younger age : the organs of public opinion not only misdirect, but purposely beguile : school education kills individuality, and therefore destroys all progress in the germ. Dr. Stockmann ends with a doctrine, which is no less a paradox because it is in some senses a truism, that the strongest man upon earth is he who stands most alone. Put in this abstract form, however, the views of Ibsen as a dramatist are exposed to some injustice. If he represents in his hero the strong individual intolerance, he also suggests, side by side with IBSEN'S SOCIAL DRAMAS. 41 it, those other elements in society without which the 'independent man' becomes in very truth a menace to himself and to others. At the very end of the play Dr. Stockmann is represented as gathering his family around him, his two sons, his daughter, and his wife. To them he speaks with an air of absolute conviction : " You see the fact is that the strongest man upon earth is he who stands most alone." But two other voices chime in, before the curtain descends. There is first the wife, who shakes her head, and, in smiling deprecation, calls him to her side by his Christian name : and then the daughter, who takes his hand trustfully with the single word, ' Father.' Dr. Stockmann may call himself alone, but if there is any chance of his maintaining his attitude of righteousness and justice, it will be due to that little paradise of wife and children, that last arid most sacred refuge of domesticity, which surrounds and overmasters his isolation, and is always vindicating the opposite truth that a man never is or can be alone. Two other plays which belong to this group may be more shortly referred to. In the ' League of Youth ' we have a study of the ardent young democrat, Stensgard, who begins with revolutionary fervour and ends with personal disaster, because, like many others of his type, he is easily conquered by the flattery of his social superiors. There is another reason, too, for his failure. He is a rhetorician and nothing more, a man to whom words come easily, a fluent orator, who throws down his 42 STUDIES AT LEISURE. crudest notions with o certain wilful persuasiveness, highly attractive to his followers, whose aspirations, nevertheless, he has no power to direct or control. This is, of course, no new character in drama. We need look no farther than Sardou, whose c Rabagas ' is painted on much the same lines. Indeed it may be said that many of Ibsen's problems are in no sense novel in our old- world civilization : we are not only accustomed to the loud-tongued democrat, but also to the socially- respectable man, the 'Tartuffe' in provincial life, to the conflict between society and the individual, and even to the wife who objects to her husband treating her as a doll. Certainly the French dramatists have dealt with subjects closely akin to these : the difference is that when the Latin races take up their parable against the enslaving conditions of modern life, they are not in such deadly earnest as the Scandinavians, they preserve the note of raillery much more happily than their northern brethren. They are less logical in their treatment, it may be, because they ' sit more loosely ' to social enigmas : on the other hand, quite apart from the fact that Art can hardly endure all this savage earnestness, they have at least the philosophical defence that the wheels of time grind extremely slowly. To carry out ideas in their proper logical sequence in the midst of an old-world society, itself a structure of venerable complexity, argues possibly much reforming zeal, but not much practical dexterity. We hasten on a revolution and make a clean sweep of the past, and lo ! instead of the new heaven and the IBSEN'S SOCIAL DRAMAS. 43 new earth, we find that we have merely been playing tricks with the hands of the clock, whose internal machinery has thereby become hopelessly damaged. * The Pillars of Society ' is another of these studies in social delusions. Consul Bernick is everything that is most respectable, he has, as it were, ' boxed the compass ' of civic respect in a Norwegian coast town. There is nothing which his fellow-citizens would not do for him, no honour that they are not prepared to lay at his feet. But he is a humbug, notwithstanding, a whited sepulchre of Pharisaic propriety, who does not hesitate to send to sea one of his merchant vessels, knowing it to be rotten. We need not go through the steps of his moral conversion, but it is interesting to observe that the conclusion of the drama suggests another moral to that which is enforced in the final scene of 'An Enemy of Society.' Dr. Stock- mann, it will be remembered, thinks himself alone, when he has in reality staunch allies in his family circle. The course of events brings home to Consul Bernick a different lesson. " I have learned this," he says, " in these days : it is you women who are the pillars of Society." His sister-in-law, Lona, at once corrects him. " Then you have learned a poor wisdom, brother-in-law. No, no ; the spirits of Truth and Freedom, these are the pillars of Society." Let us be just to the dramatist, even if his admirers are a little too inclined to fix him down to a single set of tenets. It is exactly in the equipoise of the individual and the social ideas that our salvation rests. On the one hand there must be in the individual 44 STUDIES AT LEISURE. all the elements of personal integrity and strength : on the other hand, no life can be lived without dependence on the social framework and the social atmosphere. A man is surrounded by an inevitable network of relations towards those amongst whom he lives: yet if he does not keep within himself the salt of individual initiative and honesty, society itself becomes rotten. Dr. Stock- mann exaggerated the personal element. Consul Bernick trusted too much to the social framework. Both were right and both were wrong : and the morals of the two pieces must be read side by side, if we wish to see Ibsen's philosophy. There is, we found, a considerable influence of the latest scientific ideas in the Ibsenite drama. Of this the best, because the most violent, example is to be found in 'Ghosts.' Nothing much need be said of the play, although it has formed the subject of several discussions and one recent representation. It is too frankly horrible, too barbarously crude. Nor must we be surprised at coming across this kind of dramatic enormity in the work of a man who is not only a dramatist, but a surgeon : a surgeon must not be too squeamish about human ills. ' Hedda Gabler ' is perhaps another of these curious enor- mities, where we catch ourselves wondering at a naturalism that has become brutal. Perhaps the explanation is not really far to seek. The Norwegian literature is like all the work of the youthful and the immature. It is the spontaneous outburst of forces which have not yet learnt to know themselves, or submit to the teaching of common- IBSEX'S SOCIAL DRAMAS. 45 place experience. We find in the work of a young man a piquancy, a force, a facility, which sometimes disappear when modesty and middle age supervene : but we find that it is also capable of eccentricities, of frank betises, of which the older and the more humdrum are not often guilty. ' Ghosts ' is a Ittise of this kind a horrible drama where the results of heredity are pictured in their most repulsive aspect. Mrs. Alving has for years kept up the reputation of a dead husband, whom she knew to have been a libertine. She has sent her son away that he may not be contaminated, and after her husband's death she desires to build an orphanage to his memory in order to preserve his social reputation. The son comes back and is found to have inherited not only his father's vices, but also that pitiable weakness of physical organization which is Nature's condemnation of such excesses. All her elaborate constructions to disguise the truth come tumbling about her ears : the orphanage is burnt to the ground ; the ghosts of her past life begin to walk again in the peccadilloes of the dearly-loved Oswald ; and, last scene of all in this deplorable history, the son becomes a weak, pitiable lunatic, crying for the sun. We come now to the third class into which Ibsen's social dramas have been divided, those which deal with the position of woman in modern society, and which are supposed to enforce the views of the dramatist as to the sacred rights of the individual. As has been before remarked, the didactic elements in Ibsen's work are by no means the most successful, and it is far better to 46 STUDIES AT LEISUKE. regard the plays which are included in this division from the standpoint of dramatic art than from any assumed moral platform which this representative of the modern spirit is declared to have adopted. Probably it is this group which has caused most attention to be paid to the Norwegian writer's work ; at all events it is better known in England, especially within the last year. * Rosmersholm,' for instance, has recently been performed ; 'A Doll's House' has been put before an English public on two or three occasions ; and c Hedda Gabler ' has been admirably represented by two English actresses. There are two other plays which ought to be included, 'The Lady of the Sea,' and 'The Wild Duck'; but the last may be dismissed without comment, because of its curi- ously pessimistic tone, and because its meaning and significance are so obscure as to baffle even the acuteness of the most sympathetic admirers. The position of woman in modern society suggests questions which have obviously proved very interesting to Ibsen. The discovery that she has a soul to lose or gain is the problem especially of 'A Doll's House.' The preservation of a proper individuality, owing to the philo- sophic wisdom of a duly enlightened husband, is the burden of 'The Lady of the Sea/ The ruin which the emancipated woman can produce in an old-fashioned race is the subject of * Rosmersholm' ; while the analytic study of this new and more terrible Amazon the woman who is fin-de-si&cle, and instilled with every modern theory and hypothesis, however false and arbitrary is apparently the IBSEN'S SOCIAL DRAMAS. 47 theme of the latest of Ibsen's creations, ' Hedda Gabler.' If the plays are viewed from this standpoint we are not forced to admit the theories which have been engrafted on Ibsen by his school, but we leave room for the recog- nition that in all studies of human life and circumstances the poet, especially if he be a dramatic poet, is not and never can be the mouthpiece of any one of his personages, but according to the very conditions of his craft is speak- ing with many voices, alternately the special pleader and the advocatus diaboli. In ' A Doll's House ' we have the result of a sudden illumination in the case of a wife who has been both by father and husband considered as nothing more than a doll. Doll-like and babyish in all her instincts, it would be absurd to require from such a character even the elements of morality. Nor does Nora Helmer exhibit any of the characteristics of a disciplined mind. She forges her father's name in order to secure the money for her husband's foreign tour, without any thought of possible consequences, and with the usual apology of ignorance that the end justifies the means. In this way she gets into the power of a designing bank clerk, a clever character called Krogstad, and when the crash comes she makes the discovery not only that she does not understand the laws of civilized society, but that her husband in his attempt to be both her heart and her conscience cares more for external respectability than internal rectitude. In the first shock of the surprise Nora Helmer decides to leave her home. She has, she repeats to herself, everything to learn, and there is not much 48 STUDIES AT LEISURE. chance of her acquiring valuable lessons so long as she is un ler the tutelage of her husband. She may be right, she may be wrong. The dramatist, however, is not con- cerned with the moral; he merely regards the situation as the natural and inevitable one, if we are to assume such a husband as Torvald and such a wife as Nora. If a man regards the partner of his life as a plaything, the wife, when she gains the first glimmering of education and free- dom, will be apt to make use of her immature knowledge in a somewhat startling and decisive fashion. It is here, however, that ' The Lady of the Sea ' affords an admirable contrast to the final scene of ' The Doll's House.' ' The Lady of the Sea,' who is irresistibly called back to the wilder life of the shore, is induced to remain with her husband because he gives her free scope for the develop- ment of her personality, and because his love and ten- derness suggest to him that she should have all those wider chances of knowledge and truth which respect and reverence for another person's individuality bring in their train. ' Rosmersholm ' illustrates an analogous problem in a different fashion. Education, illumination, emancipation, all these war-cries of the Feminine Crusade have no doubt their proper value. In the early stages, however, they are apt to bring not peace but a sword. Rebecca West is at all events the agent of considerable ruin in Johannes Rosmer's household. You cannot pour new wine into old bottles, and the descendant of an ancient race, who is a dreamer and an idealist, is apt to be too IBSEN'S SOCIAL DEAMAS. 49 logical in the pursuit of his new-found ambitions. What is the result in this particular instance ? His wife is o-oaded to suicide because she thinks her husband cares o more for Rebecca's influence than her own ; Johannes himself discovers that it is not a purely Platonic affection which he entertains for Rebecca; and these poor strug- gling souls, who have invoked spirits too strong for their feeble frames and limited circumstances, find no other issue but death in the same millstrearn which had en- gulfed the abandoned wife. It is difficult to see how Ibsen is preaching any particular moral in these more or less gloomy studies. He is, if we understand him aright, exercising his indubitable privilege to regard from a neutral standpoint the social complications which are incidental to a modern age. Every new movement, every stage of development, whether in man or other animals, has its victims. Nature, as we know, struggles to her goal of evolved perfection through ceaseless blood- shed, and though the tragedies, through which human beings pass in their pursuit of what seems to them their ideal, may not be so sanguinary, they are in no sense less terrible and overwhelming. And so we come to the last picture which the Norwegian dramatist has drawn for us, Hedda Gabler, a representative or perhaps rather a baricature of fin-de-siecle womanhood. Here is realism exhibited in its most extravagant and possibly its most shameless form. The heroine of this extraordinary tragedy, though she apparently does not care for any of the doubtless effete maxims of morality which have hitherto 50 STUDIES AT LEISURE. guided the human race, has at least the survival of some sesthetic instincts, and if death must come, she would prefer that it came in a graceful form. Even suicide must be conducted with due regard for what is comely and becoming, and a bullet through the head is the sole species of felo de se which is to be recognized in the sesthetic code of duties. The only persons who have a right to object to this ruthless and uncompromising analy- sis are the very women who have hitherto taken Ibsen under their wing. They may weep tears of joy over Nora Helmer as the one righteous soul that repents out of ninety-nine unilluminated sinners, but it may prove a hard task for them to take to their bosom so monstrous a specimen of unfettered womanhood as Ibsen has chosen to paint in Hedda Gabler. 51 KOGER BACON. (A FOEGOTTEN SON OF OXFORD.) "OxFOKD," says Dr. Folliott, in Peacock's tale of ' Crotchet Castle,' " was a seat of learning in the days of Friar Bacon. But the Friar is gone, and his learning with him. Nothing of him is left but the immortal nose, which, when his brazen head had tumbled to pieces, crying 'Time's Past,' was the only palpable fragment among its minutely pulverized atoms, and which is still resplendent over the portals of its cognominal college. That nose, sir, is the only thing to which I shall take off my hat in all this Babylon of buried literature." Few, probably, of the athletic youths who pass through the gate of Brasenose imitate the example of Dr. Folliott, or have any idea of the historical incidents to which the reverend doctor is here making allusion. If they keep the brazen emblem of which they are so justly proud on the bows of their racing craft on the river, or suspended on the walls of their rooms, they do not connect it with that strange and wonderful head of brass which Roger Bacon constructed, with the aid of Friar Bungay, to speak to him in mystic 52 STUDIES AT LEISURE. and oracular tones of things past and present and to come. Friar Bacon's study, which was only demolished a century ago, was situated on the old Folly Bridge; and an en- graving of it can be found in Skelton's ' Oxonia Antiqua.' In the civil wars it seems to have been used as a post of observation, but originally it had been the scene, according to popular report, of those arts of necromancy and magic with which Bacon amused himself in the thirteenth century. The story went that the brazen head was once consulted by Bungay and Bacon as to the best means of rendering England impregnable. For a long time the head was silent, and when at last the answer came, the monks, busy with some other devilry, did not hear the oracle. Wood, in his ' Antiquities of Oxford,' discusses with quaint gravity whether Bacon did or did not receive dia- bolical assistance in his manufactures. " Some imagined," he says, "that Bacon was in alliance with the Evil One, and that by the aid of spiritual agency he made a brazen head, and imparted to it the gift of speech ; and these magical operations, as Bale states by mistake, were wrought by him whilst he was a student at Brazen Nose Hall. Whether he did this by the powers of natural magic is for the present a question. Certainly John Ernest Burgravius, in a work on these subjects, contends that Bacon was indebted to celestial influences and to the power of sympathy, for these operations. To this he refers the talking statues (statuce Mercuriaks). . . However it was, I am certainly of opinion that the Devil had nothing to do with them. They were produced by Bacon's ROGER BACOX. 53 great skill in mechanics, and his knowledge of the po\ver of electricity, and not, as the ignorant and even the better- informed surmised, molten and forged in an infernal furnace." But it was no wonder that Bacon was sub- jected to such damaging suppositions, for such was the ignorance of tho convents and hostelries that the monks and friars " knew no more of a circle than its property of keeping away evil spirits, and they dreaded lest religion itself should be wounded by the angles of a triangle." It is strange that Oxford and England should for five centuries have been so far incurious about one of her greatest sons that it was only in 1733 that the first edition of the 'Opus Majus' was published by Dr. Samuel Jebb. The facts even of Bacon's life are wrapped in obscurity. He seems to have been born at Ilchester, in Somersetshire, about 1214, and to have been educated at Brasenose College in Oxford, although Merton College has also laid claim to the honour of his youthful learning. It was the custom of promising students of the University of Oxford to proceed to Pq,ris, and Bacon's progress in theology and mathematics secured him the degree of doctor in divinity, besides the honour of being held by the Parisians as the ornament of their University. Either on his return to England, or at an earlier date, he entered the convent of the Franciscan order, perhaps at the persuasion of the celebrated Grostete, Bishop of Lincoln. It was the time when Henry III. was waging doubtful war with De Montfort and his barons, and Bacon and his family had been stout partisans of the King. Nevertheless, Robert 54 STUDIES AT LEISURE. Bacon (probably uncle of the philosopher) had not hesi- tated to tell Henry that peace between himself and the barons was impossible unless Pierre Desroches, Bishop of Winchester, was banished from his councils; and the young Roger Bacon added (according to the chronicle of Matthew Paris) that the King had to beware of the self- same dangers which sailors incur on the sea, viz. ' pierres ' and 'roches,' thus alluding by a bold witticism to the hated Bishop of Winchester. In the year 1263 or 1264 an intervention on the part of Pope Urban IV. indirectly led to the composition of Bacon's chief works. Guy de Foulques, Urban's ambassador on this occasion, was informed by a clerk, named Raymond of Laon, of the friar's learning and his discoveries; and when he himself afterwards became Pope, under the name of Clement IV., wrote a letter requesting that some detailed account should be sent him of these philosophical achievements. "In order that we may better know your intentions," the prelate wrote, " we will and we ordain, in the name of our apostolical authority, that, despite all contrary injunc- tion of any prelate whatsoever, or any constitution of your order, you should send us with all possible speed a fair copy (scriptum de ~bona literal) of that work which we begged you to communicate to our dear son Raymond of Laon, when we were legate." It was in answer to this appeal that Bacon wrote, in the midst of every kind of difficulty and discouragement, the < Opus Majus,' the ' Opus Minus,' and the c Opus Tertium,' in the almost incredibly short space of fifteen or eighteen months (1267). EOGER BACON. 55 How great the difficulty, how overwhelming the dis- couragement, we can learn from what Bacon himself tells us in the early portion of the ' Opus Tertium.' The Pope was wrong in supposing that writings had already been composed by Bacon on science. Such was not the case, for his superiors, so far from encouraging him, had strictly prohibited him from writing, " under penalty of forfeiture of the book, and many days' fasting on bread and water, if any book written by me or belonging to my house should be communicated to strangers. Nor could I get a fair copy made except by employing transcribers unconnected with our order ; and then they would have copied my works to serve themselves or others, without any regard to my wishes, as authors' works are often pirated by the knavery of transcribers at Paris." Further, it was in vain to plead the cause of science amongst men who were either indifferent or openly contemptuous and hostile. The worst, thing of all was the want of money. " For I had to expend over this business more than sixty French livres, a true account of which I will hereafter set forth. I am not surprised that you did not think of these expenses, because seated on a pinnacle of the world you have so many things to think about that no one can properly gauge the anxieties of your mind. But the messengers who carried the letter were wrong not to make some mention of my needs, and they themselves would not spend a single penny, although I told them that I would write to you a full account of their loans, and that every one should get back what he lent to me. I have no money, as you know, nor can I 56 STUDIES AT LEISURE. have, nor in consequent can I borrow, because I Lave got no surety to offer. I sen',, therefore, to my brother, but he, because of his loyalty to the King's cause, lias been so pauperized, by constantly having to ransom himself out of the hands of his enemies, that he could give me no assist- ance, nor indeed have I ever had any answer from him up to this day." Bacon then turned to many men in high station, some of whom, as he bitterly adds, the Pope knew by their faces, but whose minds he did not know. " But how often was I looked upon as a shameless beggar ! (improbus). How often was I repulsed ! How often I was put off, and what confusion I felt within myself! Dis- tressed above all that can be imagined, I compelled my friends, even those who were in necessitous circumstances, to contribute what they had, to sell much of their property, to pawn the rest, to raise money at interest. And yet by reason of their poverty frequently did I abandon the work, frequently did I give it up in despair and forbear to proceed, so that had I known that you had not taken thought of all these expenses, for the whole world I would not have proceeded with it; sooner would I have given myself up to ^prison." To prison Bacon was actually sent, and perhaps more than once by those who were either jealous or afraid of him. Hieronymus de Asculo, who was made General of the Order in 1274, is said to have committed him to prison because his doctrines contained aliquas nomtates suspectas. Wood says that he appealed to Nicholas IV., but Pope Nicholas IV. was no other than Hieronymus himself, who succeeded Johannes Caietanus, KOGER BACON. 57 Nicholas III., and the result of such an appeal could not be doubtful. He appears, however, to have been subse- quently released by Raymond Galfred, and to have survived Nicholas by some months. He died when nearly eighty years old, on the feast of St. Barnabas, and was buried at the Grey Friars' Church in Oxford. Not only was his body committed to the dust, but his writings also, for it seems that means were taken to pre- vent any of his works from becoming known and read. Long enough was the period of their burial. From the thirteenth century we have to pass to the eighteenth to find the first edition of Bacon's capital work. It was in 1738 that Dr. Samuel Jebb published and dedicated to Dr. Mead the 'Opus Majus/ the editor himself being the father of that Sir Richard Jebb, the physician, who figures in the pages of Boswell's Johnson. Then another century had to elapse before any further notice was taken of Bacon. In 1848, M. Victor Cousin discovered in the library at Douai a manuscript which turned out to be Bacon's ' Opus Tertium/ and published an account of it in the 'Journal des Savants/ though he was not at the time aware that there was also a copy at the Bodleian Library, Oxford. The only copy of the ' Opus Minus,' or at least a portion of it, is also in the Bodleian, and was edited for the Rolls Series by Professor Brewer in 1859, who included in his volume the treatise which he calls ' Com- pendium Philosophise,' taken from a MS. in the British Museum. Of more recent commentaries on Bacon, we are only able to mention two, one by Professor J. K. OP THE 58 STUDIES AT LEISUEE. Ingram at Dublin, the other by a Bordeaux savant, M. Emile Charles.* While his namesake, Francis Bacon, has received perhaps more than his meed of attention in England, the earlier and the more original thinker still remains in much of the obscurity to which he was condemned by contemporary fanaticism. There is, indeed, a striking parallelism between the two English reformers, not only in their general attitude " towards mediaeval thought, but also even in the details of literary expression. Perhaps no phrase of Francis Bacon is better known than the apophthegmatic utterance, " Anti- quitas seculi juventus mundi," which appears in the 'De Augtnentis Scientiarum.' But his namesake had fore- stalled him. "We are told," says Roger Bacon, "that we ought to respect the ancients ; and no doubt the ancients are worthy of all respect and gratitude for having opened out the proper path for us. But after all the ancients were only men, and they have often been mistaken ; indeed, they have committed all the more errors just because they are ancients, for in matters of learning tlie youngest are in reality the oldest: modern generations ought to surpass their predecessors, because they inherit their labours." An equally well-known doctrine of Lord Verulam is that in which he recounts in the ' Novum Organum ' the 'idola/ or false presuppositions which hinder the path of know- ledge. But the Franciscan monk had already detailed certain ' offendicula,' or stumbling-blocks to truth, some * M. Emile Saisset lias also written a chapter on Bacon in his ' Descartes : ses precurseurs et ses disciples.' EOGER BACON. 59 of which can be compared with those mentioned by the later writer. Both the Bacons were agreed in their ad- miration of Seneca : both thought that the removal of obstacles out of the way of science was a task worthy of kings. None but a pope or an emperor, or some magnifi- cent king like Louis IX., is sufficient for these things, is the observation of Roger Bacon; and the writer of the 'Advancement' remarks that the removal of obstacles is an 'Opus Basilicum.' Here, too, is a remarkable instance. " Utilitas enim illarum (i. e. scientiarum) non traditur in eis sed exterins expectatur," says the author of the ' Opus Tertium ' ; and Francis Bacon almost translates the words in his Fiftieth Essay: "For they (studies or sciences) teach not their own use, but that is a wisdom without them and above them won by observation." The follow- ing sentences, taken from the 'Opus Tertium' of Roger Bacon, might well have come from the writings of the Lord Chancellor : "I call experimental science that which neglects arguments, for the strongest arguments prove nothing so long as the conclusions are not verified by experience." " Experimental science is the queen of the sciences and the goal of all speculation." Just as the Novum Organum ' distinguishes between two kinds of experience the unmethodical, which is 'mera palpatio,' and that which is based on system and method so, too, does Roger Bacon. " There is," he says, " a natural and imperfect experience which has no knowledge of its own power, which does not take account of its own pro- ceedings, and which is after the fashion of artisans and 60 STUDIES AT LEISURE. not of the learned. Ab jve it, and above all the speculative sciences and all the arts, there is the art of making experiences which are neither powerless nor incomplete." * But tbe monk saw clearly what the Chancellor did not always recognize, that this methodical experience depended essentially on tbe knowledge and use of mathematical formulae. " Physicists ought to know that their science is powerless unless they apply to it the power of mathematics, without which observation languishes and is incapable of certitude," is the emphatic declaration of the ' Opus Majus.' The value of method, and of a method which was formed after a mathematical model, is as patent to Roger Bacon as it was long afterwards to Descartes. Here, for instance, in the first chapter of the ' Compendium Philosophic ' are sentences which are full of the spirit of the ' Discours cle la Methode ' : " Universal knowledge requires the most perfect method. This method consists in such a careful arrangement of the different elements of a problem that the antecedent should come before the consequent, the more easy before the more difficult, the general before the particular, the less before the greater. The shortness of life further requires that we should choose for our study the most useful objects ; and we ought, in fine, to exhibit knowledge with all clearness and certitude, without taint of doubt and obscurity. Now all this is impossible without experience. For we have, as means of knowledge, author- ity, reasoning, and experience. But authority is valueless unless its warranty be shown : it does not explain, it only * ' Opus Tertium,' cap. 13. EOGER BACON. 61 forces us to believe. And so far as reasoning is concerned, we cannot distinguish between sophism and proof unless we verify the conclusion by experience and practice." Francis Bacon could not have penned more vigorous utterances than these. It is true that the later thinker is more wroth with Aristotle; but Roger Bacon also exhibits his impatience of the scholastic yoke. " It is only half a century ago," he cries, " that Aristotle was suspected of impiety and banished from the schools. To-day he is raised to the rank of a sovereign. But what is his title ? Learned he undoubt- edly is, but he does not know everything. He did what was possible for his times, but he has not reached the limits of wisdom." But what especially vexed his scholarly mind was that the very Aristotle to whom appeal was so constantly made as arbiter of all disputes was not known in his original tongue, but only through miserably defective and misleading translations. Reformer as he was at heart, Roger Bacon thought that a real comparative grammar was one of the most pressing needs. He has much magisterial scorn for the scholars of his day. Both in the ( Compendium Philosophic ' (c. 8) and in the ' Opus Tertium ' (c. 10), he delivers his mind with great plainness of speech on this subject: "We have numerous translations by Gerard of Cremona, Michael Scot, Alfred the Englishman, Herman the German, and William Flem- ing, but there is such an utter falsity in all their writings that none can sufficiently wonder at it. For a translation to be true, it is necessary that a translator should know 62 STUDIES AT LEISURE. the language from which he is translating, the language into which he translates, and the science he wishes to translate. But who is he ? and I will praise him, for he has done marvellous things. Certainly none of the ahove-named had any true knowledge of the tongues or the sciences, as is clear, not from their translations only, but their condition of life. All were alive in my time ; some in their youth contemporaries with Gerard of Cremona, who was somewhat more advanced in years among them. Herman the German, who was very intimate with Gerard, is still alive and a bishop. When I questioned him about certain books of logic, which he had to translate from the Arabic, he roundly told me that he knew nothing of logic, and therefore did not dare to translate them ; and certainly, if he was unacquainted with logic, he could know nothing of other sciences as he ought. Nor did he understand Arabic, as he confessed, because he was rather an assistant in the translations than the real translator. For he kept Saracens about him in Spain, who had a principal hand in his translations. And so of the rest, especially the notorious William Fleming, who is now in such reputation. Whereas it is well known to all the literati in Paris that he is ignorant of the sciences in the original Greek to which he makes such pretensions ; and therefore he translates falsely and corrupts the philo- sophy of the Latins." Elsewhere Bacon declares that there are not five men in Latin Christendom who are acquainted w r ith the Hebrew, Greek, and Arabic grammars. He knew them well, he adds, for he had made diligent ROGER BACON. 63 inquiry on botli sides of the sea, and had himself laboured much in these things. How, under such circumstances, could there be any real knowledge of Aristotle ? Only a few of his many works remained, and they were mutilated. The ' Organon ' had considerable lacunae. The 'History of Animals' had originally fifty books; in the Latin versions there are only nineteen. Only ten books of the ' Metaphysics ' had been preserved, and in the com- monly-used translation a crowd of chapters and an infinity of lines were missing. But even of these fragments is there any knowledge ? Men read them, but only in the Latin translations, which are miserably executed and full of errors. " I am certain," says Bacon, " that it would have been better for the Latin world if Aristotle had not been translated at all than that it should have such an obscure and corrupt version of him." Therefore Robert Grostete was right, he thinks, to neglect Aristotle alto- gether and write on his own account, making use of his own experience ; and he especially refers to the Bishop's treatises on comets and the rainbow. Hence Bacon attempts with minute accuracy to prosecute philological studies, and in the 'Compendium Philosophic ' is to be found a specimen of Greek palaeography, " the earliest in all probability extant in Western Christendom." * In his treatise on comparative grammar, the MS. of which exists in Corpus Christi College, Oxford, he wrote a short Greek accidence with a paradigm of the verb TVTTTO). Neither in logic nor in metaphysics is Bacon's work so * Brewer,