Yet as a man of science he was far ahead of his time in England. He translated the works on which he thought his fame was to rest into Latin, which he called the universal language, although he knew it but imperfectly, affirming that "English would bankrupt all our books." "He had sown the great seed in a sluggish soil and an ungenial season. He had not expected an early crop, and in his last testament had solemnly bequeathed his fame to the next age."+

As to the mode in which Shakespeare, as an author, was appreciated by his contemporaries in England, the following facts should be borne in mind. In 1623, Hemminge and Condell published the first complete collection of his plays, only thirteen or fourteen of which had been printed in his lifetime. But for their efforts it is more than likely that his unpublished dramas, some seventeen in number among which were "Julius Cæsar," "The Tempest," and "Macbeth"-would have been lost to the world. Only one other edition appeared prior to 1664, so that in forty-eight years after his death but two editions of his works, probably not making together a thousand copies, were given to a public which absorbed seventeen editions of Sidney's dreary "Arcadia." There

is no evidence that he was known to Raleigh, Sidney, Spenser, Bacon, Cecil, Walsingham, Coke, Hooker, Camden, Hobbes, Donne, Cotton, or any others, except a few

* We should except Gilbert, Hariott, and Harvey, with Napier in Scotland, all of whom, however, had prosecuted their studies abroad. Abbott, p. 338.

+ Macaulay's "History of England," i. 377.

Shakespeare does not mention his manuscripts in his will, and seems to have cared nothing for literary reputation. His sole ambition was to take rank as a country gentleman.

§ Johnson's "Life of Milton;" Symonds's "Sidney," p. 74.

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of his fellow-craftsmen.* energy, after the restoration of the Stuarts, he was almost entirely forgotten. In 1707, a poet named Tate produced a work called "King Lear," the subject of which, he said, he had borrowed from an obscure piece of the same name, recommended to his notice by a friend. This "obscure piece" was Shakespeare's "King Lear." At the beginning of the eighteenth century Lord Shaftesbury complained of his "natural rudeness, his unpolished style, and his antiquated phrase and wit." In consequence, he was excluded from several collections of the modern poets. In 1765, Johnson gave him some praise, and finally Garrick, the grandson of a Huguenot refugee, restored him to the stage and to the patriotic admiration of the English people. Since that time German criticism has done much to give him his present high position.

With the decay of English

Bacon, as a scientist, did not fare much better in England than did Shakespeare as a poet. Upon the Continent, where there were men of learning, his works met with a cordial reception. The Latin treatise "De Augmentis" was republished in France in 1624, the year after its appearance in England, and was translated into French as early as 1632. Editions came out in Holland in 1645, 1652, and 1662, and one in Strasburg even ear

*R. G. White's "Shakespeare," p. 185.

Sir William Davenant, poet-laureate to Charles II., reproduced some of Shakespeare's plays, but only after a rewriting which worked a transformation. "Macbeth," for example, was put on the stage, "with alterations, additions, amendments, new songs, machinery for the witches, with dancing and singing." As rewritten, it was published in 1673. "The Interregnum," by F. A. Inderwick, p. 265.

Guizot's "Shakespeare," p. 122. In the "Vicar of Wakefield,” Goldsmith shows how little he thought of the Shakespearian revival.

lier, in 1635. In England, only one edition in Latin appeared after the first-namely, in 1638-followed by an indifferent translation in 1640. The "Novum Organum was thrice printed in Holland, in 1645, 1650, and 1660. In England it never came separately from the press. King James said of it, "that it was like the peace of God, which passeth all understanding." No edition of his works as a whole was published in England before 1730, but one appeared at Frankfort in 1665.*

In studying the great literary lights of the Elizabethan age, one may recall his experience in witnessing a sunrise in the Alps. He rises hastily, throws on his clothes, and takes his stand. Looking far away, the clouds and distant peaks are first tinged with pink, then bathed in glory. Down creeps the golden flame, the lofty trees are all on fire, and even the shrubs are priceless coral. So the transformation scene goes on, until the lowest valleys are resurrected from their darkness. Rapt in the contemplation of a miracle, one forgets how early is the morning. But when the day has fairly broken, when the pink and gold have disappeared, and all the landscape lies in common sunlight, the traveller feels the chill, and, retiring to his blankets, waits for warmth and comfort until the sun has travelled farther on its course. What the sunrise is to noon, what the first crop upon the prairie is to the fruit of scientific agriculture, that is poetry to civilization.†

* Hallam's "Literature of Europe,” iii. 131, 132.

+ Perhaps no one has discussed this subject more ably and incisively than Matthew Arnold. "Genius is mainly an affair of energy," he says, "and poetry is mainly an affair of genius; therefore, a nation whose spirit is characterized by energy may well be eminent in poetry, . . . and we have Shakespeare." Again: "We have con

PECULIAR FEATURES OF ENGLISH HISTORY

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To understand the English people of the time of Elizabeth, we must know something of their antecedents; for, like all other nations, they were an evolution from the past, shaped by race and natural environment. Here, therefore, I shall ask the reader's patience while I call attention to some facts in their prior history which seem to me to bear a construction rather different from that usually placed upon them. This history has very peculiar features, in the disregard of which we can find the explanation of many popular misconceptions as to the Elizabethan age, and as to the origin and character of the new life which that age developed.

Taking any point in civilization, one is apt to think of the approach to it as if it were a gradual ascent. This has been the case in the history of the Netherlands, in the brief story of America—with but a slight exception in New England after the death of the first Puritan settlers and it was true of classic Greece and Rome, until the period of their decline. Our school histories of England sometimes leave the impression that such was the course of progress there; certain important events and certain leading characters stand out upon the record,

fessedly a very great literature. It still remains to be asked: "What sort of a great literature? A literature great in the special qualities of genius, or great in the special qualities of intelligence?'" He answers the question by showing that the literature of genius, "stretching from Marlow to Milton," led up to "our provincial and second-hand literature of the eighteenth century." The energy had died out. When it appeared again in the days of the Napoleonic wars, the literature of genius also reappeared. On the other hand, France had a literature of intelligence developed in prose, which led up to "the French literature of the eighteenth century—one of the most powerful and persuasive intellectual agencies that have ever existed, the greatest European force of the eighteenth century."-"The Literary Influence of Academies," "Essays in Criticism," pp. 47–50.

and we are left to think of them as landmarks on a highway, instead of mere beacon lights flashing from isolated mountain-peaks. For example, we have glowing descriptions of civilization in Britain under the Roman rule. As to Anglo-Saxon times, we are told of the "Venerable Bede," and his famous school at Jarrow; of Alcuin, John Scotus, the learned King Alfred, and his establishment of Oxford University-the last, however, a myth. Under the Normans, we hear of the superb cathedrals, Oxford with its thirty thousand studentsanother myth; Magna Charta, and the learning of Roger Bacon. Still later on, we read of the poetry of Chaucer, hear of Wyclif and his Bible, Sir Thomas More and the Oxford Reformers, and finally of the glorious age of Elizabeth, with its world-renowned poets, statesmen, and men of action.

Glancing simply from one of these events or individuals to another, or even following the panegyrists of the English Constitution, one might imagine a people steadily rising in civilization until they had reached their present stage of development. But in this respect the experience of England is almost unique in the history of nations. To follow her career is not to ascend the side of a single mountain, but to cross a series of mountain chains separated by valleys nearly as deep and dark as that from which one makes the first ascent. Comparing it to a stream, it resembles a river flowing through a prairie country, which twists and curves, returning on its track, so that after following it for scores of miles the traveller finds himself no nearer to the sea.

The truth of this statement will be seen by any one who runs over the course of English history prior to the Reformation. Why it should be so is the important question. Why should a people, living on an island by