Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

net: but we know no more about it than that it was meant in some way or other to assist in sweetening the Queen's temper towards the Earl of Essex and it has either not been preserved at all, or not so as to be identified. There are also two other poems which have been ascribed to him, whether upon the authority of any one who had means of knowing, I cannot say ; but certainly upon external evidence which, in the absence of internal evidence to the contrary, entitles them to a place somewhere in this edition: and there can be no place fitter than this.

The first is to be found in a volume of manuscript collections now in the British Museum (Bibl. Regia, 17. B. L.); but the hand is that of a copyist, and tells us only that somebody had said or thought that the verses were by Bacon: a fact however which is worth rather more in this case than in many others; inasmuch as (verses being out of Bacon's line) a man merely guessing at the author is not likely to have thought of him. The internal evidence tells for little either way. They are such lines as might very well have been written by Bacon, or by a hundred other people.

VERSES MADE BY MR. FRANCIS BACON.

The man of life upright, whose guiltless heart is free
From all dishonest deeds and thoughts of vanity:
The man whose silent days in harmless joys are spent,
Whom hopes cannot delude, nor fortune discontent;
That man needs neither towers nor armour for defence,
Nor secret vaults to fly from thunder's violence:
He only can behold with unaffrighted eyes

The horrors of the deep and terrors of the skies;

Thus scorning all the care that Fate or Fortune brings, He makes the Heaven his book, his wisdom heavenly

things;

Good thoughts his only friends, his life a well-spent

age,

The earth his sober inn, a quiet pilgrimage.

The other is a more remarkable performance; and is ascribed to Bacon on the authority of Thomas Farnaby, a contemporary and a scholar. It is a paraphrase of a Greek epigram, attributed by some to Poseidippus, by others to Plato the Comic poet, and by others to Crates the Cynic. In 1629, only three years after Bacon's death, Farnaby published a collection of Greek Epigrams under the title Ἢ τῆς ἀνθολογίας ̓Ανθολογία: Florile gium Epigrammatum Græcorum, eorumque Latino versu a variis redditorum. After giving the epigram in question, with its Latin translation on the opposite page, he adds Huc elegantem V. C. L. Domini Verulamii Tapadiav adjicere adlubuit; and then prints the English lines below (the only English in the book); with a translation of his own opposite, in rhyming Greek. A copy of the English lines was also found among Sir Henry Wotton's papers, with the name Francis Lord Bacon at the bottom;1. a fact which would be of weight, if one could infer from it that Wotton believed them to be genuine; for he was a man likely enough to know. This, however, would be too much to infer from the mere circumstance that the paper had been in Wotton's possession, for it may have been sent to him by a correspondent, he knowing nothing about it: and as the case stands, he is not sufficiently connected with

1 See Reliquiæ Wottonianæ, p. 513.

it to be cited as a witness. But on the other hand Farnaby's evidence is direct and strong. He speaks as if there were no doubt about the fact; nor has there ever, I believe, been a rival claim put in for any body else. So that unless the supposition involves some improbability (and I do not myself see any), the natural conclusion is that the lines were really written by Bacon. And when I compare them with his translations of the 90th and 137th psalms, the metre of which, though not the same, has a kind of resemblance. which makes the comparison more easy, especially

in the rhymed couplet which closes each stanza, — I should myself say that the internal evidence is in favour of their being by the same hand.

The original (the text of which I take from Wellesley's Anthologia Polyglotta) runs thus:

ΠΟΣΕΙΔΙΠΠΟΥ, οἱ δὲ ΠΛΑΤΩΝΟΣ ΚΩΜΙΚΟΥ.

Ποίην τις βιότοιο τάμοι τρίβον ; εἶν ἀγορῇ μὲν
Νείκεα καὶ χαλεπαὶ πρήξιες· ἐν δὲ δόμοις
Φροντίδες· ἐν δ' ἀγροῖς καμάτων ἅλις· ἐν δὲ θαλάσσῃ
Τάρβος· ἐπὶ ξείνης δ', ἣν μὲν ἔχης τι, δέος·
Ἢν δ ̓ ἀπορῆς, ἀνιηρόν. ἔχεις γάμον; οὐκ ἀμέριμνος
Ἔσσεαι· οὐ γαμέεις; ζῇς ἐτ' ἐρημότερος.
Τέκνα πόνοι· πήρωσις ἄπαις βίος· αἱ νεότητες
*Αφρονες· αἱ πολιαὶ δ' ἔμπαλιν ἀδρανέες.
Ἢν ἄρα τοῖνδε δυοῖν ἑνὸς αἵρεσις, ἢ τὸ γενέσθαι
Μηδέποτ', ἢ τὸ θανεῖν αὐτίκα τικτόμενον.

The English lines which follow (described as "Lord Verulam's elegant aрdía ") are not meant for a translation, and can hardly be called a paraphrase. They are rather another poem on the same subject and with the same sentiment; and though the topics are mostly the same, the treatment of them is very different. The

merit of the original consists almost entirely in its compactness; there being no special felicity in the expression, or music in the metre. In the English, compactness is not aimed at, and a tone of plaintive melody is imparted, which is due chiefly to the metrical arrangement, and has something very pathetic in it to my ear.

The world's a bubble, and the life of man

less than a span;

In his conception wretched, from the womb
so to the tomb:

Curst from the cradle, and brought up to years
with cares and fears.

Who then to frail mortality shall trust,
But limns the water, or but writes in dust.

Yet since with sorrow here we live opprest,

what life is best?

Courts are but only superficial schools

to dandle fools.

The rural parts are turned into a den

of savage men.
And where's the city from all vice so free,
But be term'd the worst of all the three?

may

1 So little does the effect depend upon the metre, that a fair enough idea may be conveyed of it in English blank verse, which can follow the words more closely than rhyme.

What life shall a man choose? In court and mart

Are quarrels and hard dealing; cares at home;

Labours by land; terrors at sea; abroad,

Either the fear of losing what thou hast,

Or worse, nought left to lose; if wedded, much

Discomfort; comfortless unwed; a life

With children troubled, incomplete without:

Youth foolish, age outworn. Of these two choose then ;
Or never to be born, or straight to die.

118 PREFACE TO TRANSLATION OF CERTAIN PSALMS.

Domestic cares afflict the husband's bed,

or pains his head.

Those that live single take it for a curse,

or do things worse.

Some would have children; those that have them moan, or wish them gone.

What is it then to have or have no wife,
But single thraldom, or a double strife?

Our own affections still at home to please is a disease:

To cross the seas to any foreign soil

perils and toil.

Wars with their noise affright us: when they cease,
we are worse in peace.

What then remains, but that we still should cry
Not to be born, or being born to die.

« ForrigeFortsæt »