Defense of Poesy: ". . . who by their own dis“... gracefulness disgrace the most graceful poesy," or in this from Spenser's Faerie Queene:

"This griefes deepe wound I would to thee disclose, Thereto compelled through hart-murdring paine;

But dread of shame my doubtfull lips doth still restraine.'

"Ah! my deare dread,' said then the fearefull mayd, 'Can dread of ought your dreadlesse hart withhold, That many hath with dread of death dismayd,

And dare even deathes most dreadfull face behold?'”

or in Shakespeare's delighted burlesque of it in the Handicraftsmen's play concluding A Midsummer Night's Dream; the ostentatious lament of Laertes at Ophelia's funeral, etc. There is an interesting use of it, to select but one example, in Bacon's essay, "Of Suitors": "Surely there is in some sort a right in every suit; either a right of equity, if it be a suit of controversy, or a right of desert, if it be a suit of petition. If affection lead a man to favour the wrong side in justice, let him rather use his countenance to compound the matter than to carry it. If affection lead a man to favour the less worthy in desert, let him do it without depraving or disabling the better deserver."

The dangerous ease with which Euphuism ran to extremes brought about early reactions. The fashion was laughed out of court by Puttenham, Sidney, and others by the end of the sixteenth century,certainly Bacon was never mastered by it, - yet

copious borrowing from the Latin continued and was extended with the increase of new intellectual needs and discoveries. The native vocabulary was greatly expanded, and literary style as well as diction felt accordingly the Latinizing influence. Under such circumstances, it is plain that Latin had first-rate dignity in the regard of thinking men, whatever affection they might show also for English. Bacon composed much directly in Latin, and translated his English work into "that universal language which may last," he said, “as long as books last," for very much the same reason that leads a man to prefer a full to a half-morocco binding. It was felt, indeed, by both his contemporaries and himself, though much less strongly by them, perhaps, than by him, that English was in process of becoming, and that the very age and traditions of Latin were effective guarantees of its stability as a literary language. To his friend Toby Matthews Bacon wrote shortly before his death: "It is true, my labour is now most set to have those works which I had formerly published well translated into Latin, for these modern languages will at one time or other play the bankrupt with books, and since I have lost much time with this age, I would be glad, as God would give me leave, to recover it with posterity." And to James he wrote concerning the Advancement of Learning: "I have been mine own Index Expurgatorius, that it may be read in all places. For since my end of putting it in Latin was to have it read everywhere, it had been an absurd contradiction

to free it in the language and to pen it up in the

This reverence for Latin shows itself not only in the foregoing expressions, but also in the very English of the Essays. Both the temper and diction of the more abstract among them are Latin in source. In nearly all of them passages from the works of Cicero, Tacitus, Virgil, and Livy are freely quoted, and the Latin cast of word or phrase is often deliberately preferred to the more intelligible vernacular. Yet Bacon's work is vigorously Elizabethan, for all that. In his most "classic" moments a frankly Saxon phrase or a bit of blunt humour will sometimes assert itself. Bacon was no verbal fop; he knew what he wished to say, and said it, if now with brief and stately eloquence, because that must have seemed to him the way befitting the occasion; or if, again, with abrupt and homely directness, because that manner, too, would at times fit most sincerely the matter of his discourse.

It is possible, of course, to detect and discuss the prime elements of Bacon's style. To insist upon a precise characterization of his style is more difficult. Indeed, as Mr. Reynolds expresses it, "the fact seems to be that Bacon had at all times almost any style at command, and that he varies his style with the occasion, becoming all things in turn so as to ensure getting a hearing, trying one experiment after another, and giving proof of mastery in each. . . . To speak therefore of Bacon's style is in strict terms impos

sible." Yet we may say that though a master of styles, the style in which Bacon uses those styles is always one and recognizable. It is always, in the noblest meaning of the word, an austere style, whether haughty, high and proud; crisp, nervous, informational and epigrammatic; or even graciously conversational. By this is meant not merely that his utterance, like his personality, more immediately wins our respect than our affection, that his dignity is equal to every situation, and that he does not seem to invite a too enthusiastic praise; but also that these very qualities cover others less willingly displayed, -- honour, ruth, hope, and power. Bacon seldom unlocks his heart, yet there is a way of approaching him that forestalls unlocking.

as

The essays at large are temptingly quotable, in "Praise is the reflection of virtue"; "Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set"; "Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.' Yet their very lack of elaboration makes it unsafe to quote too authoritatively from them. We are not conscious of pedantry or posing in these "brief notes," through which Bacon speaks to us in a manner more human than that of the Novum Organum. We are conscious, rather and always, of Bacon himself, of his essential superiority to tricks and ruts of style, of his little worldly prudences as of his riper and larger wisdom; of his concern for the empirical ego as of his interest in the soul of man. In short, Bacon's variously haughty and

human manners may succeed each other, or even at ' times commingle; but of himself, as an able, willing, and resourceful critic of life, we can never be unmindful. He is "playing the game," and he intends that his readers shall learn to play it, too, as they may and can; and so he seems to say to us all: "I will tell you what and how I think of these affairs when in my own company, and sometimes you shall even hear how I feel. You will do well, I think, to heed me, for I am able to be your friend, and the Academy to which I invite you as Platonic pupils is not without its just title."

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In such a case we have hardly the right to look for extreme finish and final symmetry of manner. Bacon's paragraphs are, indeed, less units than series, his essays less treatises than terse eloquences. And yet it is a mistake to declare, with Church, that nothing can be more loose than the structure of the essays. There is no art, no style, almost, except in a few, the political ones, no order: thoughts are put down and left unsupported, unproved, undeveloped.' The student will find, instead, upon careful examination, that the essays are often nuclei of ordered wholes, capable of being taken as schemes or synopses. Though the flower has not grown, the bud is full to bursting, and this analogy is the more reassuring when we consider the slowly expanding growth of the original essays. Though it is doubtful that Bacon looked upon his Essays at any time as finished products, even of their kind, it is not doubtful that