Francis Bacon and his secret society - Grand Lodge of Colorado

AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 239
chains, shave men, open doors and shut them, fling doivn platters,
stools, chests, l sometimes appear in likeness of hares, crows,
black dogs, 2 etc., of which read Pit. Thyrsus the Jesuit, in his
tract, de locis infestis, i. 4, who will have them to be devils, or
the souls of damned men that seek revenge, or else souls out of
purgatory that seek ease. . . . These spirits often foretell men's
deaths by several signs, as knockings, groanings, 3 etc. Near
Rnpes Nova, in Finland, in the Kingdom of Sweden, there is a
lake in which, before the Governor of the Castle dies, a spectrum,
in the habit of Arion with his harp, appears and makes
excellent music. . . . Many families in Europe are so put in
mind of their last by such predictions, and many men are forewarned,
(if we may believe Paracelsus), by familiar spirits in divers
shapes, as cocks, crows, owls, which often hover about sick
men 's chambers, . . . forthat(asBernardinusdeBustisthinketh)
God permits the devil to appear in the form of crows, and suchlike
creatures, to scare such as live wickedly here on earth."
Farther on, when discoursing of idleness as a cause of melancholy,
the Anatomist describes the men who allow themselves to
become a prey to vain and fantastical contemplation, as unable
" to go about their necessary business, or to stave off and extri-'
cate themselves," but as "ever musing, melaucholisiug, and
carried along as he that is led round about a heath with Puck in
the night, they run earnestly on in this labyrinth of anxious and
solicitous meditation."
Such notes and studies
as these appear most conspicuously iu
the Shakespeare and other plays of Bacon. It is hard to believe
that he could have created the fairy world of the Midsummer
Night's Dream without some such preparation as is recorded in
the scientific notes. Let us give a few minutes' consideration to
this play, with the view of showing how dry facts, businesslike
notes, and commonplace observation were distilled into
1 See how this is illustrated in M. N. D. ii. 1. Puck takes the form of a stool.
2 "In likeness of a, filly foal." M. N. D. ii. 1.
"Sometime a horse I'll be, sometimes a hound,
A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire;
And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn,
Like horse, hound, hog, bear, and fire, at every turn."
M. N. D. iii. I.
3 Compare the sounds, etc., before the deaths of Duncan, Macbeth, and Julius
Caesar.
4 '-It was the owl that shrieked, that fearful bellman." Macb. ii 3.