Francis Bacon and his secret society - Grand Lodge of Colorado

254 FRANCIS BACON
The philosophic poet does not forget to allude to the effects of
" warm winds and moist airs in inducing putrefaction, " and in
"increasing pestilential diseases and catarrhs." Caliban's
worst imprecation (which, by the way, personifies
true Paracelsian style) is this
''As wicked dew as e'er my mother brush'd
With raven's feather from unwholesome fen
Drop on you both! A southwest blow on ye
And blister you all o'er."
even dew in
Prospero is equal to the occasion, and answers him in kind
"For this, be sure, thou shalt have cramps,
Side stitches that shall pen thy breath up.
. . . I'll rack thee with old cramps,
Fill all thy bones with aches. " i
Bacon's cogitations on winds, contagion, putrefaction, and the
doctrines of the human body, of the biform figure of nature,
and of the sensitive soul, are inextricably interwoven in the
Shakespeare plays of the later period. It is not the intention of
this book to enter deeply into anything; the aim is to excite
interest, even opposition, if that will promote study, and at least
to encourage our younger readers to believe that all is not yet
known on any of these subjects, and that vast fields of delightful
and profitable research lie open for them to explore, delve
into, and cultivate. But in order to do this, it is quite certain
that the tool absolutely indispensable is a knowledge of Bacon's
works — not only of those little pithy essays which embody all
that the ordinary reader conceives as Bacon's writings, exclusive
of " exploded science," and law tracts and speeches, too dull to
be tackled. Let those who are of this mind take those very
works and read them with the belief that they are the keys to
all the great literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries; the touchstones by which the authorship of other
works may be tried; sketches for finished pictures or condensed
editions of more casual and discursive works of Bacon's early
1 Tempest, i. 2, and compare where Thersites curses Patroclus (
Troilus and
Cretsida, v. 1), and where Marcius curses the Romans (C'uriol. i. 4, 30, etc.).