out that the reward is inconsistent with Manly's wholesale condemnation of mankind, the author has taken his precaution. This is an ideal, not a realistic outcome: Where else, but on stages, do we see From Molière's character Wycherley took that side which made most appeal to him: he showed his contemporaries a misanthrope upon whom they had most need to look. There was no need to satirize to them the vice of hostility to society; there was abundant need to satirize society's selfish hypocrisy. It was a plain dealer in a world of deceit that Wycherley made his hero, not an enemy of society in a world which reasonably demanded that the individual should harmonize his life with itself. In Manly, most of all, does Wycherley show both his ability to draw something of the best from Molière's philosophy, and at the same time, by his adaptation of it to the needs of his own stage and world, his originality. His was a genuine process of assimilation; and because it was such it is true both that Wycherley derives from others the hint of much that is of value in his plays, and that "the best things are his own." Profligacy was not the only thing original about Wycherley; and if his Manly is a "ferocious sensualist," that fact must not be allowed to conceal what he is else. Manly's sensualism is exercised upon but one woman. He is not a Horner, securing a free range for his animal passions among women by a disgusting ruse, he is not even the ordinary rake of Restoration drama or society. He is created to be a contrast to that type, is the man of but one love. He proclaims that "a true heart admits but of one friendship, as of one love"; and if he loves Olivia for her beauty, there can be no question that he is also both sincere and truthful when he declares that he loves Olivia because (as he believes her to be) "she is all truth and hates the lying world." When he is undeceived, it is both a mad love and a mad anger that concentrate in the "ferocious" and "nauseous" deed by which in the nihilism of the moment he seeks to satisfy both. It is most unfortunate for the effect of Wycherley's idealism that he pictures the brutal will and deed with such tremendous power. To any sane mind it deals a deadly blow to a conception of Manly as an essentially manly character, just as Fidelia's subservience, in spite of her protests, destroys any possi bility of regarding her as a truly admirable and lovable woman. But when all is said, it yet remains true that Wycherley does not acquiesce in the view of moral values held by society and by his fellow dramatists, that he repudiates much to which they assent, and tries not without success, however partial and however inconsistent, to hold up an admirable contrast. Struggling vaguely and blindly in the fog of the social life of his day, Wycherley had yet some vision of a saner and higher social life; confused and baffled by the ethical nihilism of his circle, he had yet some perception of the foulness of sensualism, of the degradation of insincerity and selfishness, and some vision of true manliness and the real values of life. To these visions he gave expression as imperfect, confused and inconsistent as the visions themselves. It is in this expression that his originality chiefly consists; and if there cannot be claimed for it any considerable degree of that spontaneous, genuinely creative and interpretive power which alone deserves the name originality in the truest sense, it is yet distinct from the work of his fellow dramatists and from that of his dramatic master, Molière, and it has a literary, dramatic and moral worth of its own. ' THE RELATION OF BACON'S ESSAYS TO HIS PROGRAM FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING Τ RONALD S. CRANE. Associate Professor of English, Northwestern University. HE prevailing opinion concerning the relation of Bacon's Essays to the great philosophical enterprise of his middle and later life would still seem to be that formulated, nearly a generation ago, by the late Edward Arber. The Essays, he wrote,1 "formed no essential part" of Bacon's work; "they entered not into his conceptions of the proficiency and advancement of knowledge. Like his History of Henry VII . . . and his intended History of Henry VIII. . . these Counsels are by-works of his life, the labours, as it were, of his left hand; his right being occupied in grasping the Instauration." In spite of the fact that this view is in apparent harmony with Bacon's own opinion, expressed in 1622 to Bishop Andrews,2 it is, I believe, a demonstrably mistaken one. In particular, it fails to take account of the large number of close resemblances, both of substance and of form, between the Essays-especially those first printed in 1612 and 1625-and certain portions of the Advancement of Learning (1605) and of the De Augmentis Scientiarum (1623). Though some of these resemblances have been noted by earlier students of Bacon,3 their general significance for the interpretation of the Essays has never, to my knowledge, been ade1A Harmony of the Essays, etc., of Francis Bacon (Westminster, 1895), p. xxvii. "As for my Essays, and some other particulars of that nature, I count them but as the recreations of my other studies, and in that sort purpose to continue them; though I am not ignorant that those kind of writings would, with less pains and embracement (perhaps), yield more lustre and reputation to my name, than those other which I have in hand." See James Spedding, The Letters and the Life of Francis Bacon (London, 1868-90), VII, 374. Notably by F. G. Selby in the notes to his editions of the Essays (London, 1895) and of the Advancement (London, 1898), and by Pierre Villey in his Montaigne et François Bacon (Paris, 1913), pp. 39-40. By far the most complete list of parallels between the Essays and Bacon's other works-a list to which I am much indebted in this paper—is to be found in an unpublished Master's thesis by one of my former students, Mrs. Frank Hawley, of La Grange, Illinois. quately appreciated. It is the intention of this paper to consider their bearing, first on Bacon's purpose and choice of themes in the Essays, and second on the changes in method and style which distinguished the Essays of 1612 and 1625 from those of 1597. I "I will now attempt," Bacon wrote at the beginning of the Second Book of the Advancement of Learning,1 "to make a general and faithful perambulation of learning, with an inquiry what parts thereof lie fresh and waste, and not improved and converted by the industry of man; to the end that such a plot made and recorded. to memory may both minister light to any public designation, and also serve to excite voluntary endeavours. . . ." For the present study, two stages of this "perambulation" are of particular importance those dealing respectively with "moral" and with "civil" knowledge.2 "Moral knowledge" Bacon divided into two parts: "the Exemplar or Platform of Good, and the Regiment or Culture of the Mind; the one describing the nature of good, the other prescribing rules how to subdue, apply, and accommodate the will of man thereunto." 3 In treating the first of these topics he contented himself largely with a somewhat scholastic analysis of the aspects of good-individual good and good of communion, good active and good passive. When he reached the second, however, his attitude became once more that of the pioneer, intent on setting forth "what ground lieth unmanured." "This part therefore," he wrote, "because of the excellency thereof, I cannot but find exceeding strange that it is not reduced to written inquiry. . . . It is reasonable therefore that we propound it in the more particularity, both for the worthiness, and because we may acquit ourselves for reporting it deficient. We will therefore enumerate some heads or points thereof, that it may appear the better what it is, and whether it be extant." And The Works of Francis Bacon, ed. Spedding, Ellis, and Heath (New edition, London, 1887-1901), III, 328. Unless otherwise specified, all references to Bacon in this article are to this edition. 1 *III, 417-45 and 445-76. For the corresponding portions of the De Augmentis, see I, 713-828. Hereafter I shall give page references to the De Augmentis only when its text differs in substance from that of the Advancement. 'III, 419. *III, 433. |