Imaginary Conversations and Poems: A Selection
haze of the weather has come into the parlour, or my sight is the
worse for last night's reading, no fewer than six silver pints.
Surely, six tables for company are laid only at coronations.
_Bacon._ There are many men so squeamish that forsooth they would keep
a cup to themselves, and never communicate it to their nearest and
best friend; a fashion which seems to me offensive in an honest house,
where no disease of ill repute ought to be feared. We have lately,
Master Richard, adopted strange fashions; we have run into the wildest
luxuries. The Lord Leicester, I heard it from my father--God forfend
it should ever be recorded in our history!--when he entertained Queen
Elizabeth at Kenilworth Castle, laid before her Majesty a fork of pure
silver. I the more easily credit it, as Master Thomas Coriatt doth
vouch for having seen the same monstrous sign of voluptuousness at
Venice. We are surely the especial favourites of Providence, when such
wantonness hath not melted us quite away. After this portent, it would
otherwise have appeared incredible that we should have broken the
Spanish Armada.
Pledge me: hither comes our wine.
[_To the Servant._] Dolt! villain! is not this the beverage I reserve
for myself?
The blockhead must imagine that Malmsey runs in a stream under the
ocean, like the Alpheus. Bear with me, good Master Hooker, but verily
I have little of this wine, and I keep it as a medicine for my many
and growing infirmities. You are healthy at present: God in His
infinite mercy long maintain you so! Weaker drink is more wholesome
for you. The lighter ones of France are best accommodated by Nature to
our constitutions, and therefore she has placed them so within our
reach that we have only to stretch out our necks, in a manner, and
drink them from the vat. But this Malmsey, this Malmsey, flies from
centre to circumference, and makes youthful blood boil.
_Hooker._ Of a truth, my knowledge in such matters is but spare. My
Lord of Canterbury once ordered part of a goblet, containing some
strong Spanish wine, to be taken to me from his table when I dined by
sufferance with his chaplains, and, although a most discreet, prudent
man as befitteth his high station, was not so chary of my health as
your lordship. Wine is little to be trifled with, physic less. The
Cretans, the brewers of this Malmsey, have many aromatic and powerful
herbs among them. On their mountains, and notably on Ida, grows that
dittany which works such marvels, and which perhaps may give activity
to this hot medicinal drink of theirs. I would not touch it,
knowingly: an unregarded leaf, dropped into it above the ordinary,
might add such puissance to the concoction as almost to break the
buckles in my shoes; since we have good and valid authority that the
wounded hart, on eating thereof, casts the arrow out of his haunch or
entrails, although it stuck a palm deep.[4]
_Bacon._ When I read of such things I doubt them. Religion and
politics belong to God, and to God's vicegerent the king; we must not
touch upon them unadvisedly: but if I could procure a plant of dittany
on easy terms, I would persuade my apothecary and my gamekeeper to
make some experiments.
_Hooker._ I dare not distrust what grave writers have declared in
matters beyond my knowledge.
_Bacon._ Good Master Hooker, I have read many of your reasonings, and
they are admirably well sustained: added to which, your genius has
given such a strong current to your language as can come only from a
mighty elevation and a most abundant plenteousness. Yet forgive me, in
God's name, my worthy master, if you descried in me some expression of
wonder at your simplicity. We are all weak and vulnerable somewhere:
common men in the higher parts; heroes, as was feigned of Achilles, in
the lower. You would define to a hair's-breadth the qualities, states,
and dependencies of principalities, dominations, and powers; you would
be unerring about the apostles and the churches; and 'tis marvellous
how you wander about a pot-herb!
_Hooker._ I know my poor weak intellects, most noble lord, and how
scantily they have profited by my hard painstaking. Comprehending few
things, and those imperfectly, I say only what others have said
before, wise men and holy; and if, by passing through my heart into
the wide world around me, it pleaseth God that this little treasure
shall have lost nothing of its weight and pureness, my exultation is
then the exultation of humility. Wisdom consisteth not in knowing many
things, nor even in knowing them thoroughly; but in choosing and in
following what conduces the most certainly to our lasting happiness
and true glory. And this wisdom, my Lord of Verulam, cometh from
above.
_Bacon._ I have observed among the well-informed and the ill-informed
nearly the same quantity of infirmities and follies: those who are
rather the wiser keep them separate, and those who are wisest of all
keep them better out of sight. Now, examine the sayings and writings
of the prime philosophers, and you will often find them, Master
Richard, to be untruths made to resemble truths. The business with
them is to approximate as nearly as possible, and not to touch it: the
goal of the charioteer is _evitata fervidis rotis_, as some poet
saith. But we who care nothing for chants and cadences, and have no
time to catch at applauses, push forward over stones and sands
straightway to our object. I have persuaded men, and shall persuade
them for ages, that I possess a wide range of thought unexplored by
others, and first thrown open by me, with many fair enclosures of
choice and abstruse knowledge. I have incited and instructed them to
examine all subjects of useful and rational inquiry; few that occurred
to me have I myself left untouched or untried: one, however, hath
almost escaped me, and surely one worth the trouble.
_Hooker._ Pray, my lord, if I am guilty of no indiscretion, what may
it be?
_Bacon._ Francis Bacon.
FOOTNOTE:
[4] Lest it be thought that authority is wanting for the strong
expression of Hooker on the effects of dittany, the reader is referred
to the curious treatise of Plutarch on the reasoning faculty of
animals, in which (near the end) he asks: 'Who instructed deer wounded
by the Cretan arrow to seek for dittany? on the tasting of which herb
the bolts fall immediately from their bodies.'
OLIVER CROMWELL AND WALTER NOBLE
_Cromwell._ What brings thee back from Staffordshire, friend Walter?
_Noble._ I hope, General Cromwell, to persuade you that the death of
Charles will be considered by all Europe as a most atrocious action.
_Cromwell._ Thou hast already persuaded me: what then?
_Noble._ Surely, then, you will prevent it, for your authority is
great. Even those who upon their consciences found him guilty would
remit the penalty of blood, some from policy, some from mercy. I have
conversed with Hutchinson, with Ludlow,[5] your friend and mine, with
Henry Nevile, and Walter Long: you will oblige these worthy friends,
and unite in your favour the suffrages of the truest and trustiest men
living. There are many others, with whom I am in no habits of
intercourse, who are known to entertain the same sentiments; and these
also are among the country gentlemen, to whom our parliament owes the
better part of its reputation.
_Cromwell._ You country gentlemen bring with you into the People's
House a freshness and sweet savour which our citizens lack mightily. I
would fain merit your esteem, heedless of those pursy fellows from
hulks and warehouses, with one ear lappeted by the pen behind it, and
the other an heirloom, as Charles would have had it, in Laud's
Star-chamber. Oh, they are proud and bloody men! My heart melts; but,
alas! my authority is null: I am the servant of the Commonwealth. I
will not, dare not, betray it. If Charles Stuart had threatened my
death only, in the letter we ripped out of the saddle, I would have
reproved him manfully and turned him adrift: but others are concerned;
lives more precious than mine, worn as it is with fastings, prayers,
long services, and preyed upon by a pouncing disease. The Lord hath
led him into the toils laid for the innocent. Foolish man! he never
could eschew evil counsel.
_Noble._ In comparison with you, he is but as a pinnacle to a
buttress. I acknowledge his weaknesses, and cannot wink upon his
crimes: but that which you visit as the heaviest of them perhaps was
not so, although the most disastrous to both parties--the bearing of
arms against his people. He fought for what he considered his
hereditary property; we do the same: should we be hanged for losing a
lawsuit?
_Cromwell._ No, unless it is the second. Thou talkest finely and
foolishly, Wat, for a man of thy calm discernment. If a rogue holds a
pistol to my breast, do I ask him who he is? Do I care whether his
doublet be of cat-skin or of dog-skin? Fie upon such wicked sophisms!
Marvellous, how the devil works upon good men's minds!
_Noble._ Charles was always more to be dreaded by his friends than by
his enemies, and now by neither.
_Cromwell._ God forbid that Englishmen should be feared by Englishmen!
but to be daunted by the weakest, to bend before the worst--I tell
thee, Walter Noble, if Moses and the prophets commanded me to this
villainy, I would draw back and mount my horse.
_Noble._ I wish that our history, already too dark with blood, should
contain, as far as we are concerned in it, some unpolluted pages.
_Cromwell._ 'Twere better, much better. Never shall I be called, I
promise thee, an unnecessary shedder of blood. Remember, my good,
prudent friend, of what materials our sectaries are composed: what
hostility against all eminence, what rancour against all glory. Not
only kingly power offends them, but every other; and they talk of
_putting to the sword_, as if it were the quietest, gentlest, and most
ordinary thing in the world. The knaves even dictate from their stools
and benches to men in armour, bruised and bleeding for them; and with
school-dames' scourges in their fists do they give counsel to those
who protect them from the cart and halter. In the name of the Lord, I
must spit outright (or worse) upon these crackling bouncing
firebrands, before I can make them tractable.
_Noble._ I lament their blindness; but follies wear out the faster by
being hard run upon. This fermenting sourness will presently turn
vapid, and people will cast it out. I am not surprised that you are
discontented and angry at what thwarts your better nature. But come,
Cromwell, overlook them, despise them, and erect to yourself a
glorious name by sparing a mortal enemy.
_Cromwell._ A glorious name, by God's blessing, I will erect; and all
our fellow-labourers shall rejoice at it: but I see better than they
do the blow descending on them, and my arm better than theirs can ward
it off. Noble, thy heart overflows with kindness for Charles Stuart:
if he were at liberty to-morrow by thy intercession, he would sign thy
death-warrant the day after, for serving the Commonwealth. A
generation of vipers! there is nothing upright nor grateful in them:
never was there a drop of even Scotch blood in their veins. Indeed, we
have a clue to their bedchamber still hanging on the door, and I
suspect that an Italian fiddler or French valet has more than once
crossed the current.
_Noble._ That may be: nor indeed is it credible that any royal or
courtly family has gone on for three generations without a spur from
interloper. Look at France! some stout Parisian saint performed the
last miracle there.
_Cromwell._ Now thou talkest gravely and sensibly: I could hear thee
discourse thus for hours together.
_Noble._ Hear me, Cromwell, with equal patience on matters more
important. We all have our sufferings: why increase one another's