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ready to spend its rhetoric on things, and composing its metres with them.

      Nor shall death brag thou wanderest in his shade,

      When in eternal lines to time thou growest.

      He is building and manning new ships in his triumphant fleet. But they are more warlike than they were. The papers that this Academe issues now have the stamp of the Tower on them. 'The golden shower,' that 'flowed from his fruitful head of his love's praise' flows no more. Fierce bitter things are flung forth from that retreat of learning, while the kingly nature has not yet fully mastered its great wrongs. The 'martial hand' is much used in the compositions of this school indeed for a long time afterwards.

      Fitter perhaps to thunder martial stower

      When thee so list thy tuneful thoughts to raise, said the partner of his verse long before.

      With rage

        Or influence chide or cheer the drooping stage,

      says his protegé.

      It was while this arrested soldier of the human emancipation sat amid his books and papers, in old Julius Caesar's Tower, or in the Tower of that Conqueror, 'commonly so called,' that the 'readers of the wiser sort' found, 'thrown in at their study windows,' writings, as if they came 'from several citizens, wherein Caesar's ambition was obscurely glanced at' and thus the whisper of the Roman Brutus 'pieced them out.'

      Brutus thou sleep'st; awake, and see thyself.

        Shall Rome [soft – 'thus must I piece it out.']

        Shall Rome stand under one man's awe? What Rome?

* * * * *

        The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,

        But in ourselves that we are underlings.

* * * * *

      Age, thou art shamed.

      It was while he sat there, that the audiences of that player who was bringing forth, on 'the banks of Thames,' such wondrous things out of his treasury then, first heard the Roman foot upon their stage, and the long-stifled, and pent-up speech of English freedom, bursting from the old Roman patriot's lips.

       Cassius. And let us swear our resolution.

       Brutus. No, not an oath: If not the face of men, The sufferance of our soul's, the time's abuse, If these be motives weak, break off betimes, And every man hence to his idle bed; So let high-sighted tyranny range on, Till each man drop by lottery.

      It was while he sat there, that the player who did not write his speeches, said —

       Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass, Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron, Can be retentive to the strength of spirit; If I know this, know all the world beside, That part of tyranny that I do bear, I can shake off at pleasure.

      And why should Caesar be a tyrant then? Poor Man! I know he would not be a wolf, But that he sees the Romans are but sheep: He were no lion, were not Romans hinds.

      But I, perhaps, speak this

       Before a willing bondman.

       Hamlet. My lord, – you played once in the university, you say?

       Polonius. That did I, my lord; and was accounted a good actor.

       Hamlet. And what did you enact?

       Polonius. I did enact Julius Caesar. I was killed i'the Capitol;

      Brutus killed me.

       Hamlet. It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf

      there. – Be the players ready?

      Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light. For the law of writ, and the liberty. These are the only men.

       Hamlet. Why do you go about to recover the wind of me, as if you

      would drive me into a toil?

       Guild. O my lord, if my duty be too bold, my love is too

      unmannerly.

       Hamlet. I do not well understand that. Will you play upon this pipe?

       Guild. My lord, I cannot.

       Hamlet. I pray you.

       Guild. Believe me, I cannot.

       Hamlet. I do beseech you.

       Guild. I know no touch of it, my lord.

       Hamlet. 'Tis as easy as lying. Govern these ventages with your fingers and thumb, give it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent music. Look you, these are the stops.

       Guild. But these cannot I command to any utterance of harmony: I have not the SKILL.

       Hamlet. Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of ME? You would play upon ME; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart of MY MYSTERY; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my key; and there is much music, excellent voice in this little organ, yet cannot you make it speak. 'Sblood! do you think I AM EASIER TO BE PLAYED ON THAN A PIPE? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot PLAY upon me.

       Hamlet. Why did you laugh when I said, Man delights not me?

       Guild. To think, my lord, if you delight not in man, what lenten entertainment THE PLAYERS shall receive from you. We coted them on the way, and thither are they coming to offer you – SERVICE.

      BOOK I.

      THE ELIZABETHAN ART OF DELIVERY AND TRADITION

      PART I.

      MICHAEL DE MONTAIGNE'S 'PRIVATE AND RETIRED ARTS.'

      And thus do we of wisdom and of reach,

      With windlaces and with assays of bias,

        By indirections, find directions out;

        So by my former lecture and advice,

        Shall you, my son. —Hamlet.

      CHAPTER I

ASCENT FROM PARTICULARS TO THE 'HIGHEST PARTS OF SCIENCES,' BY THE ENIGMATIC METHOD ILLUSTRATED

      Single, I'll resolve you. —Tempest.

      Observe his inclination in yourself. —Hamlet.

      For ciphers, they are commonly in letters, but may be in words. Advancement of Learning.

      The fact that a Science of Practice, not limited to Physics and the Arts based on the knowledge of physical laws, but covering the whole ground of the human activity, and limited only by the want and faculty of man, required, in the reigns of Elizabeth and James the First, some special and profoundly artistic methods of 'delivery and tradition,' would not appear to need much demonstration to one acquainted with the peculiar features of that particular crisis in the history of the English nation.

      And certainly any one at all informed in regard to the condition of the world at the time in which this science, – which is the new practical science of the modern ages, – makes its first appearance in history, – any one who knows what kind of a public opinion, what amount of intelligence in the common mind the very fact of the first appearance of such a science on the stage of the human affairs presupposes, – any one who will stop to consider what kind of a public it was to which such a science had need as yet to address itself, when that engine for the diffusion of knowledge, which has been battering the ignorance and stupidity of the masses of men ever since, was as yet a novel invention, when all the learning

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