en the
planet on which they exist, shall have altered its relations, or have
ceased to be. Lord Bacon, in the language of the gods, if I may use an
Homeric phrase, has expressed a similar thought:--

"Lastly, leaving the vulgar arguments, that by learning man
excelleth man in that wherein man excelleth beasts; that by
learning man ascendeth to the heavens and their motions, where in
body he cannot come, and the like; let us conclude with the
dignity and excellency of knowledge and learning in that whereunto
man's nature doth most aspire, which is immortality or
continuance: for to this tendeth generation, and raising of houses
and families; to this tend buildings, foundations, and monuments;
to this tendeth the desire of memory, fame, and celebration, and
in effect the strength of all other human desires. We see then how
far the monuments of wit and learning are more durable than the
monuments of power, or of the hands. For have not the verses of
Homer continued twenty-five hundred years, or more, without the
loss of a syllable or letter; during which time, infinite palaces,
temples, castles, cities, have been decayed and demolished? It is
not possible to have the true pictures or statues of Cyrus,
Alexander, Caesar; no, nor of the kings or great personages of much
later years; for the originals cannot last, and the copies cannot
but lose of the life and truth. But the images of men's wits and
knowledges remain in books, exempted from the wrong of time, and
capable of perpetual renovation. Neither are they fitly to be
called images, because they generate still, and cast their seeds
in the minds of others, provoking and causing infinite actions and
opinions in succeeding ages: so that, if the invention of the ship
was thought so noble, which carrieth riches and commodities from
place to place, and consociateth the most remote regions in
participation of their fruits; how much more are letters to be
magnified, which, as ships, pass through the vast seas of time,
and make ages so distant to participate of the wisdom,
illuminations, and inventions, the one of the other?"

But let us now consider what the drama should be. And first, it is not a
copy, but an imitation, of nature. This is the universal principle of the
fine arts. In all well laid out grounds what delight do we feel from that
balance and