'Vainly, for lo! new messengers! but more He had not yet informed him he had a son, 'Embarrassed was the dean; but cleared his eye And cloudy forehead, and thus made reply: "It grieves me--grieves me greatly to refuse The first small boon for which Torribio sues; But a rich cousin, by my kin well seen, One that is only fit to be a dean, Leave not, dear master, ('tis my prayer) half done 'After some pause, Torribio gave consent, And with him to his see of Badajos went; Where, as if he had filled the high vicar's stall, He was to the new bishop all in all : Nay...by his conduct earned, and tongue and pen, Golden opinions of all sorts of men. 'Beneath the guidance of so good a master, That throughout Spain, in country, town, and court, 'The occasion was not by Torribio lost; Who for his son again besought the post; And was again refused the vacant place: But that with all imaginable grace: "The archbishop felt such sorrow, felt such shame, At so postponing his preceptor's claim : But could he a yet older claim withstand? Bound to this Lord" (though visible relation At his rare fortune that had gained the good, So little there those two were to remain, Was summoned by a chamberlain from Rome, "Torribio was not with his reverend chief It chanced, upon a visit to his son; Who (for his course had been more slow than sure) But, being now returned, was spared the pain Of suing for the vacant see in vain : Him the arch-prelate went to meet; he prest With open arms Torribio to his breast; And cried; "you have heard good news; now hear the best! Now have I two to tell instead of one; I have been made a cardinal, and your son A cardinal as well shall briefly be; I had predestined him my vacant throne: Now put yourself, dear master, in my place : Torribio was, in truth, or in appearance, Content, nor cursed the beldam's interference. But--would you sift the story---she whose will The pious son pretended to fulfil, This earnest advocate was old, and fat, And foolish, seeing but her maid and cat; And, as on all sides it was said, (Heaven bless her!) Knew not the very name of her confessor. Was it not rather at the instigation Of a Gallician lady, a relation Of this Don Pablos, it was brought about, A hospitable widow and devout? Thus much is sure; the prelate used to vaunt This pious woman's wine of Alicant; 'However this might be, in friendly sort And lo unanimous the conclave were In calling him to fill St. Peter's chair. The holy father solemnly proclaimed... 'He then to faithful services referred, 'Meanwhile to him, that deem'd he'd gain'd his scope, And knew enough of magic for a pope, And now could ill frequent the sabbath revels In the flesh, a thing no longer to be borne: 'He ended frowning; but, unmoved in look, And called aloud (as he whilere had done) SELECTIONS. [We fortunately possess three or four old volumes of Blackwood's Magazine, containing many things worthy to be snatched from the oblivion that usually attends the productions of periodical literature. Some of these we intend to select, for the Messenger. The following dialogue, published in 1818, must strike every reader, as happily characteristic of the persons who carry it on. Shakspeare's natural and simple explanations of his own intellectual processes, Bacon's more profound philosophizings, and the exquisite though exaggerated flatteries of the Queen by both of them; are word for word such as might be expected from the real Shakspeare and Bacon, could some actual colloquy of theirs be handed down to us. There is, however, an anachronism in making Bacon Lord Chancellor in Queen Elizabeth's time. He was not even Lord Keeper until 1617; nor Lord Chancellor till 1620; 15 or 16 years after her death.-And the worthy chaplain errs (perhaps intentionally, to flatter his master) when he connects with Lord B.'s name a tradition respecting the arch at Cambridge, which properly belongs to the Friar Roger Bacon.-Ed. Mess.] DIALOGUE BETWEEN LORD BACON AND SHAKSPEARE. Lord Bacon (in his study.) Now, my pen, rest awhile. The air of this dark and thought-stirring chamber must not be breathed for too long at a time, lest my wits grow sluggish by reason of too much poring. I will go forth and walk. But first let me restore to their shelves these wormwood schoolmen. Come gray-beard Aristotle, mount thou first, and tell the spiders not to be astonished if their holes are darkened, for a seraphic doctor is about to follow. Scotus and Ramus, why these dog's-ears? It was once a different sort. And now, as I lift each book, methinks its cumbrous leaves club all their syllogisms, and conspire to weigh down that feeble arm, which has just been employed in transcribing the Novum Organum. Alas! that folly and falsehood should be so hard to grapple with-but he that hopes to make mankind the wiser for his labors must not be soon tired. My single brain is matched against the errors of thousands; and yet every time I return to reflect upon the laws of nature, she meets my thoughts with a more palpable sanction, and a voice seems to whisper from the midst of her machinery, that I have not inquired in vain.-Ho! who waits in the ante-chamber there? Does any one desire an audience? Page. The Queen has sent unto your Lordship, Mr. William Shakspeare, the player. Bacon. Indeed!-I have wished to see that man. Show him in. Report says her Majesty has lately tasked him to write a play upon a subject chosen by herself. Good-morrow, Mr. Shakspeare. Shakspeare. Save your Lordship! Here is an epistle from her Majesty. Bacon (Reads.) "The Queen desires, that as Mr. Shakspeare would fain have some savor of the Queen's own poor vein of poesy, he may be shown the book of sonnets, written by herself, and now in the keeping of my Lord Chancellor, who indeed may well keep what he hath so much flattered; although she does not command him to hide it altogether from the knowing and judicious." Shakspeare. How gracious is her Majesty! Sure the pen, for which she exchanges her sceptre, cannot choose but drop golden thoughts. Bacon. You say well, Mr. Shakspeare. But let us sit down, and discourse awhile. The sonnets will catch no harm by our delay, for true poesy, they say, hath a bloom which time cannot blight. Shakspeare. True, my Lord. Near to Castalia there bubbles also a fountain of petrifying water, wherein the muses are wont to dip whatever poesies have met the approval of Apollo; so that the slender foliage, which originally sprung forth in the cherishing brain of a true poet, becomes hardened in all its leaves, and glitters as if it were carved out of rubies and emeralds. The elements have afterwards no power over it. Bacon. Such will be the fortune of your own productions. Shakspeare. Ah, my Lord! Do not encourage me whatever rude conceits his own natural vein supplies to hope so. I am but a poor unlettered man, who seizes him with, upon the enforcement of haste and necessity; and therefore I fear that such as are of deeper studies than myself, will find many flaws in my handiwork to laugh at both now and hereafter. weep as you do, Mr. Shakspeare, need not fear scholars. Bacon. He that can make the multitude laugh and A head naturally fertile and forgetive is worth many libraries, inasmuch as a tree is more valuable than a basket of fruit, or a good hawk better than a bagful of game, or the little purse which a fairy gave to Fortunatus more inexhaustible than all the coffers in the treasury. More scholarship might have sharpened your judgment, but the particulars whereof a character is composed are better assembled by force of imagination than of judgment, which, although it perceive coherences, cannot summon up materials, nor melt them into a compound, with that felicity which belongs to imagination alone. Shakspeare. My Lord, thus far I know, that the first glimpse and conception of a character in my mind, is always engendered by chance and accident. We shall suppose, for instance, that I, sitting in a tap-room, or standing in a tennis-court. The behavior of some one fixes my attention. I note his dress, the sound of his voice, the turn of his countenance, the drinks he calls for, his questions and retorts, the fashion of his person, and, in brief, the whole outgoings and incomings of the man. These grounds of speculation being cherished and revolved in my fancy, it becomes straightway possessed with a swarm of conclusions and beliefs concerning the individual. In walking home, I picture out to myself what would be fitting for him to say or do, upon any given occasion, and these fantasies being recalled, at some after period, when I am writing a play, shape themselves into divers mannikins, who are not long of being nursed into life. Thus comes forth Shallow, and Slender, and Mercutio, and Sir Andrew Aguecheek. Bacon. These are characters who may be found alive in the streets. But how frame you such interlocutors as Brutus and Coriolanus? Shakspeare. By searching histories, in the first place, my Lord, for the germ. The filling up afterwards comes rather from feeling than observation. I turn myself into a Brutus or a Coriolanus for the time; and can, at least in fancy, partake sufficiently of the nobleness of their nature, to put proper words in their mouths. Observation will not supply the poet with every thing. He must have a stock of exalted sentiments in his own mind. Bacon. In truth, Mr. Shakspeare, you have observed the world so well, and so widely, that I can scarce believe you ever shut your eyes. I too, although much engrossed with other studies, am, in part, an observer of mankind. Their dispositions, and the causes of their good or bad fortune, cannot well be overlooked even by the most devoted questioner of physical nature. But note the difference of habitudes. No sooner have I observed and got hold of particulars, than they are taken up by my judgment to be commented upon, and resolved into general laws. Your imagination keeps them to make pictures of. My judgment, if she find them to be comprehended under something already known by her, lets them drop, and forgets them; for which reason a certain book of essays, which I am writing, will be small in bulk, but I trust not light in substance. Thus do men severally follow their inborn dispositions. Shakspeare. Every word of your Lordship's will be an adage to after times. For my part, I know my own place, and aspire not after the abstruser studies; although I can give wisdom a welcome when she comes in my way. But the inborn dispositions, as your Lordship has said, must not be warped from their natural bent, otherwise nothing but sterility will remain behind. A leg cannot be changed into an arm. Among stageplayers, our first object is to exercise a new candidate, until we discover where his vein lies. Bacon. Do not those who enact what you write fail sometimes in rendering your true meaning? Shakspeare. Grievously, alas! and yet methinks they often play well too. In writing, however, I strive to make the character appear with sufficient clearness in the dialogue, so that it may not lie altogether at the discretion of looks and gestures. Bacon. In what esteem hold you the man who enacts Falstaff? Plays he not well? Shakspeare. Indifferently, my Lord. He lacks the eye of a true jester, and does not speak the wit as if it were his own. Nevertheless, my shafts do not seem entirely blunted by his shooting them, since they are so eagerly waited for by the spectators. As for pregnancy in himself, he has none. Bacon. Yet, by giving voice and utterance to your thoughts, he has pleased the Queen to a degree seldom known before. At each time of his reappearance, her majesty seemed to rejoice as if it had been the coming of a bridegroom, and the ladies of her court failed not to clap their hands. When they saw him fall down in battle at Shrewsbury, they cried out, "Alas! for our sport is ended!" but when he rose again, alive and well, the Queen began to laugh more than ever, and said she would know Falstaff better next time; and asked Essex, who stood behind her chair, if he had any such devices for saving himself at need. After the curtain fell, Essex brought Sir John a purse of angels, which the Queen said he would require, as Mrs. Quickly had now pawned all her plate, and could no longer support him in his debaucheries. Shakspeare. Does your lordship sometimes honor these scenic pastimes with your presence? Bacon. To say the truth, I have more frequently read your plays than seen them acted. Look round this narrow closet, Mr. Shakspeare. Behold these rows of books, in which are marshalled various samples of men's wisdom and folly. Here is the theatre which I love most to visit, although it be not always for sport or relaxation. This table is a stage, upon which these grave doctors sometimes descend to play their pranks, until I grow weary, and cut short their logic by flapping their leaves together. These pens are what once served them for swords and daggers; and this wax is like the human understanding, which they have run into a mould, and stamped with the head of Aristotle. Shakspeare. Touching that matter I have the advantage of your Lordship. I care not whose head they stamp it with, or what doctrines and opinions are current; for, so long as men are born with the same passions and dispositions, the world will furnish the same handles to the tragedian. Therefore, while my Lord Verulam is vexing his brain with subtle questions, William Shakspeare lives with little thought, except it be to gather fresh fuel for his fancy. To the poet who has a ready-going pen, there needs not much painful preparative, since his best impressions are often got in the midst of idleness and sport. Bacon. I am told that you do not invent the plots of your own plays, but generally borrow them from some common book of stories, such as Bocaccio's Decameron, or Cynthio's Novels. That practice must save a great expenditure of thought and contrivance. Shakspeare. It does, my Lord. I lack patience to invent the whole from the foundation. Bacon. If I guess aright, there is nothing so hard and troublesome as the invention of coherent incidents; and yet, methinks, after it is accomplished, it does not show so high a strain of wit as that which paints separate characters and objects well. Dexterity would achieve the making of a plot better than genius, which delights not so much in tracing a curious connexion among events, as in adorning a phantasy with bright colors, and eking it out with suitable appendages. Homer's plot hangs but ill together. It is indeed no better than a string of popular fables and superstitions, caught up from among the Greeks; and I believe that they who, in the time of Pisistratus, collected his poem, did more than himself to digest its particulars. His praise must therefore be found in this, that he reconceived, amplified, and set forth, what was but dimly and poorly conceived by common men. Shakspeare. My knowledge of the tongues is but small, on which account I have read ancient authors mostly at second hand. I remember, when I first came to London, and began to be a hanger-on at the theatres, a great desire grew in me for more learning than had fallen to my share at Stratford; but fickleness and impatience, and the bewilderment caused by new objects, dispersed that wish into empty air. Ah, my Lord, you cannot conceive what a strange thing it was for so impressible a rustic, to find himself turned loose in the midst of Babel. My faculties wrought to such a degree, that I was in a dream all day long. My bent was not then toward comedy, for most objects seemed noble, and of much consideration. The music at the theatre ravished my young heart; and amidst the goodly company of spectators, I beheld, afar off, with dazzled sight, beauties who seemed to outparagon Cleopatra of Egypt. Some of these primitive fooleries were afterwards woven into Romeo and Juliet. her person. if you will follow me into another chamber, I shall show you the Queen's Book of Sonnets; which, not to commend up to the stars, would show much blindness and want of judgment. Her majesty is a great princess, and must be well aware of the versatility of her own parts, which fit her no less for a seat among the Muses, than to fill the throne of her ancestors. Shakspeare. Were her majesty to listen to all that might be spoken of her good gifts, she would find the days too short for expediting any other business. The most her subjects can do with their praise is, to thrust it upon her by snatches; and, as Jupiter is said to have had a small trap-door in heaven, through which, when open, ascended the foolish prayers and vows of manBacon. Your Julius Cæsar and your Richard the kind, so might her majesty's presence-room be provided Third please me better. From my youth upward I with a golden funnel for receiving the incense of those have had a brain politic and discriminative, and less innumerable worshippers, whose hearts are full of her, prone to marvelling and dreaming than to scrutiny.although their quality enables them not to approach Some part of my juvenile time was spent at the court of France, with our ambassador, Sir Amias Paulet; and, to speak the truth, although I was surrounded by many dames of high birth and rare beauty, I carried oftener Machiavelli in my pocket than a book of madrigals, and heeded not although these wantons made sport of my grave and scholarlike demeanor. When they would draw me forth to an encounter of their wit, I paid them off with flatteries, till they forgot their aim in thinking of themselves. Michael Angelo said of painting, that she was jealous, and required the whole man, undivided. I was aware how much more truly the same thing might be said of philosophy, and therefore cared not how much the ruddy complexion of my youth was sullied over the midnight lamp, or my outward comeliness sacrificed to my inward advancement. Shakspeare. The student's brain is fed at the expense of his body; and I suspect that human nature is like a Frenchman's lace;-there is not enough of it to be pulled out both at the neck and the sleeves. Bacon. Walk this way, Mr. Shakspeare. The Queen's book is not to be found among ordinary classics, SAMUEL JOHNSON AND DAVID HUME. These two remarkable individuals, although contemporaries, never came personally in contact. Dr. Johnson was looked upon by his friends as the colloquial champion of England; and probably the exultation which they felt in seeing him thrash every opponent, could have received little addition, except from betting. If they had met, David Hume would probably have declined the contest. There is something extremely ludicrous in this headlong pugnacity, when manifested by an individual who is supposed to make reflection Bacon. What you observe is in part true. Yet if his business; and Dr. Johnson seems to have been the we look back upon ancient times, we shall find excep- only modern philosopher whose propensities were likely tions. Plato's body was as large and beautiful as that to have revived those scenes described by Lucian, in his of any unthinking Greek; and so also was the body of Banquet and other pieces. This was not altogether Pythagoras, whom men had almost deified for his con- owing to bigotry. His character seems to have been orijunct perfection of mind and person. To mention ginally endowed with an overplus of the noble spirit of Alcibiades, Epaminondas, Cæsar, and others, would be resistance; so that even had his temperament been less unseasonable; since, although these men had ability morbidly irritable, and his prejudices less inveterate, he enough for the great advancement of their own or their would still have betrayed an inclination to push against country's fortunes, the same portion might have gone the movements of other minds. Upon the whole, it is but a small way toward the extension of knowledge in probable that the cultivation of his conversational powgeneral. But here we touch upon the distinction be-ers was not favorable to his powers of composition, tween understanding and those energies which are necessary for the conduct of affairs. Shakspeare. Speaking of bodily habitudes, is it true that your lordship swoons whenever the moon is eclipsed, even though unaware of what is then passing in the heavens? Bacon. No more true, than that the moon eclipses whenever I swoon. Shakspeare. I had it from your chaplain, my lord. Bacon. My chaplain is a worthy man; he has so great a veneration for me, that he wishes to find marvels in the common accidents of my life. Shakspeare. The same chaplain also told me, that a certain arch in Trinity College, Cambridge, would stand until a greater man than your lordship should pass through it. because it habituated him to seek less after truth in its substantive form than truth corrective of error, and to throw his thoughts into such a form as could be most conveniently used in argument. Although gifted with great powers, both of observation and reflection, he passed his life in too great a ferment ever to make any regular philosophical use of them. He was full of those stormy and untoward energies peculiar to the English character, and would have required something to wreak himself upon, before he sat down to reflect. This English restiveness and untowardness, with which the Doctor was somewhat too much impregnated, makes a ridiculous figure in literature, but constitutes a very important element when introduced into active life. It is in a great measure a blind element; but in the political dissensions of a free country, it is a far Shak-safer one than the scheming and mischievous propensities of personal vanity and ambition. It is a quality which rather inclines sturdily to keep its own place, than to join in a scramble. Bacon. Did you ever pass through it, Mr. speare? Shakspeare. No, my lord. I never was at Cambridge. Bacon. Then we cannot yet decide which of us two is the greater man. I am told that most of the professors there pass under the arch without fear, which indeed shows a wise contempt of the superstition. Shakspeare. I rejoice to think that the world is yet to have a greater man than your lordship, since the arch must fall at last. Bacon. You say well, Mr. Shakspeare; and, now, David Hume's temperament was well calculated for a philosopher of the Aristotelian class; that is to say, one who founds his reasonings upon experience, and upon the knowledge gathered by the senses. His whole constitution seems to have been uncommonly sedate and tranquil, and no part of it much alive or awake, but his understanding. Most of the errors of his phi losophy, perhaps, arose from his overlooking elements of human nature which were torpid within himself, and | and concisely, and in making the taste for reflection which could not be learnt by the mere external observer more popular than it was before. of mankind. He knew more of the virtues in their practical results, than he knew of them as sentiments; and his theory of utility resembles that explanation of musical concords which modern physics have enabled us to draw from the vibrations of the atmosphere, but which is merely an external supplement to the musical faculty within us, which judges of the harmony of sounds by totally different means. The coldness of David Hume's character enabled him to shake off all vulgar peculiarities of thought and feeling, and to ascend into the regions of pure and classical intellect. No English writer delivers his remarks with so much grace. The taste which he followed in his compositions was founded upon the most generalized principles, and the most extended considerations of propriety; and the consequence is, that they possess a beauty which, whatever may be the fluctuations of human opinion, will never decay. He was utterly beyond the contagion of contemporary notions, and seems to have habituated himself to write as addressing a remote posterity, in whose eyes the notions which during his time had stirred and impelled the world, would perhaps be considered as the mere infatuations of ignorance and barbarism. The worthy David is entitled to less credit for those passages where he seems impressed with a belief that his own writings might continue to be perused at some future era, when christianity would only be remembered as an exploded superstition. However, there was perhaps more skepticism than vanity in this. His writings are elaborately perspicuous. He thought he saw the foundations of all human opinions sliding so fast, that he was determined to give his own works as fair a chance as possible of being understood, if they survived the wreck. David Hume had too little personal character about him, to bear the marks of any particular nation. The sedate self-possession for which he was remarkable, has sometimes, however, been ascribed to Scotsmen in general, and his countrymen have always been notorious for dialectical propensities. It is remarkable, that no particular intellectual faculty has ever been set down as predominating in the English composition. Her great men have excelled in every different way, both in isolated faculties and in the aggregation of them. Englishmen have long been the first, both in delighting and instructing the nations; but owing to constitutional causes, they have also, like Dr. Johnson, been the most miserable of mankind. Dr. Johnson thought that all foreigners were comparatively fools. If we compare the lives of Hume and Johnson, we find Hume spending his years in a manner well enough suited for the cultivation of his metaphysical powers, but too secluded, and too much at ease, to make him practically acquainted with human passions. In all his writings, Hume appears as a philosophical spectator, capable of estimating the wisdom or folly of men's conduct in relation to external circumstances, and of prognosticating its result; but not very capable of entering sympathetically into their feelings, or of strongly conceiving the impulses by which they are guided. Johnson had better opportunities of observation, of which we see the products in his writings; and he might have observed still better, had his attention not been so often engrossed by the fermentation of absurd prejudices in his own mind. He was generally more anxious to know whether a man was a whig in politics, or a high-churchman, or a dissenter, than to understand the mechanism which had been implanted in the individual by nature. Johnson, during his lifetime, enjoyed more fame than Hume, and more personal authority in the world of letters. His growling was heard all over Parnassus. The influence he had on English literature consisted, not in disseminating any new system of opinions, but in teaching his countrymen how to reason luminously Johnson had certainly more of what is commonly called genius than Hume. Possessing a stronger imagination and warmer feelings, it would have been less difficult for him than for the skeptic to have mounted into the regions of poetry; as may be seen in his tale of Anningait and Ajut, and some other pieces. Hume is said to have composed verses in his youth, which would probably be written in imitation of the coldest and most artificial models. Although Johnson had imagination, there was no native grace or elegance in his mind, to guide him in forming poetical combinations; and perhaps there is not in any English book a more clumsy and ungainly conception than that of the Happy Valley in Rasselas. Any thing that Hume had, beyond pure intellect, seems to have been a turn for pleasantry, which his strict taste prevented him from ever obtruding gratuitously upon the reader. During the time when these men flourished, it may be safely averred, that the influence of intellect was completely predominant over that of genius in this country. No great poet arose, who produced moral impressions fit to be weighed against the speculative calculations to which the times were giving birth. ODE. Among the happiest specimens of modern Latinity, is Dr. Johnson's ode to Mrs. Thrale, from the Island of Skye. It begins, "Permeo terras ubi nuda rupes, Saxeas miscet nebulis ruinas," &c. Sir Walter Scott says that he landed some years ago on Skye with a party of friends, and had the curiosity to inquire what was the first idea on every one's mind at landing. All answered separately it was this ode. If the following translation, which makes no attempt to give a conception of the extreme elegance of the original, shall direct to it the attention of any of your classical readers, whose recollection it may have escaped, you will be rewarded for the space it fills. FROM THE ISLE OF SKYE. I tread the land where rocks piled high |