I think the component parts of English were in the latter years of
Elizabeth thus exquisitely proportioned one to the other. Yet Bacon had
no faith in his mother-tongue, translating the works on which his fame
was to rest into what he called "the universal language," and affirming
that "English would bankrupt all our books." He was deemed a master of
it, nevertheless; and it is curious that Ben Jonson applies to him in
prose the same commendation which he gave Shakespeare in verse, saying,
that he "performed that in our tongue which may be compared or preferred
either to _insolent Greece or haughty Rome_"; and he adds this pregnant
sentence: "In short, within his view and about his time were all the wits
born that could honor a language or help study. Now things daily fall:
wits grow downwards, eloquence grows backwards." Ben had good reason for
what he said of the wits. Not to speak of science, of Galileo and Kepler,
the sixteenth century was a spendthrift of literary genius. An attack of
immortality in a family might have been looked for then as scarlet-fever
would be now. Montaigne, Tasso, and Cervantes were born within fourteen
years of each other; and in England, while Spenser was still delving over
the _propria quae maribus_, and Raleigh launching paper navies,
Shakespeare was stretching his baby hands for the moon, and the little
Bacon, chewing on his coral, had discovered that impenetrability was one
quality of matter.
Pages:
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242