enterprise, are the very considerations which in his Letters of Advice he urges as calculated to enhance its glory. In the last of the letters he says, 'If any man be of opinion that the nature of the enemy doth extenuate the honour of the service, being but a rebel and a savage, I differ from him; for I see the justest triumphs that the Romans in their greatness did obtain, and that whereof the Emperors in their styles took addition and denomination, were of such an enemy as this, that is, people barbarous and not reduced to civility, magnifying a kind of lawless liberty and prodigal of life, hardened in body, fortified in woods and bogs, and placing both justice and felicity in the sharpness of their swords; such were the Germans, and ancient Britons, and divers others; upon which kind of people, whether the victory were a conquest or a reconquest upon a rebellion or revolt, it makes no difference, that ever I could find, in honour.' Bacon remarks in the Advancement that 'Letters bring things home, and represent them more to the life, than either Annals or Lives.' His Letters of Advice to Essex, which are printed in every edition of his works, afford a remarkable illustration of the justice of this remark. A NOTE K Of Shakespeare's Knowledge of Ireland. CCORDING to the Natural History, 'No instrument hath the sound so melting and prolonged as the Irish Harp (s. 223), and Bacon would seem to have been fascinated by its wail. In an undated letter to Pearce, the secretary of the Lord Deputy of the day, he asks for information about Ireland, and having expressed his anxiety to understand how things pass in that kingdom, he adds: 'this is not merely curiosity, for I have ever, I know not by what instinct, wished well to that unpolished part of the crown.' How well he wished the country is patent in his writings. In the Considerations which he addressed to Elizabeth, he showed himself so far in advance of his times that he recommended the toleration of Religion, the endowment of the University, and the establishment of local Courts of Justice. In the Considerations which he addressed to King James he recommended the great Plantation which was foreshadowed by Shakespeare when he represents King Richard as determined to supplant those rough rug-headed kerns.' Even after his fall, he was constantly pressing upon Buckingham the necessity of keeping his eye on Ireland. The Poet, like the Statesman, exhibited a minute knowledge of the Island. In Hamlet the Prince of Denmark swears 282 Of Shakespeare's Knowledge of Ireland. by the Irish saint. In The Comedy of Errors Dromio of Syracuse is acquainted with the Irish bogs. In As You Like It Rosalind declares that she was never so berimed since Pythagoras' time, that she was an Irish rat'; and for the barking of the wolves of Syria' in the tale of Lodge on which the play was founded, she substitutes the howling of the Irish wolf. In The Merry Wives of Windsor Ford declares that he would sooner trust an Irishman with his aqua vitae bottle than a woman with herself. In Henry the Fourth Hotspur protests that he would sooner hear 'Lady my Brach howl in Irish' than listen to Lady Mortimer when she sang in Welsh. In Henry the Fifth Macmorris presents us with a specimen of the Irish brogue; the Dauphin laughs at Orleans for riding like an Irish kern; and the Chorus predicts the triumph of Essex over the Irish rebels. In Henry the Sixth Beaufort urges York to proceed against the uncivil kerns of Ireland'; York proposes to 'nourish a mighty band in Ireland' in order 'to raise a storm in England'; and the soldier who proclaims Edward the Fourth displays a lawyer's knowledge of the Royal style when he proclaims him 'King of England and France and Lord of Ireland.' Finally, in Henry the Eighth Griffith's character of Wolsey is the mere versification of a passage in Campion's History of Ireland, and the dramatist talks as familiarly of Kildare's attainder, and the policy of Wolsey in sending Surrey to Ireland, as if he had been the successor of Wolsey as the Lord Chancellor of England. |