No More Learning

For the rest o' the fleet, they all have met again.
Id. , _The Tempest_, I. i. 232.


PAGE =180=. TO S^r HENRY WOTTON.

The occasion of this letter was apparently (see my article, _Bacon's
Poem, The World: Its Date And Relation to Certain Other Poems_: _Mod.
Lang. Rev. _, April, 1911) a literary _debat_ among some of the wits of
Essex's circle. The subject of the _debat_ was 'Which kind of life is
best, that of Court, Country, or City? ' and the suggestion came from
the two epigrams in the Greek Anthology attributed to Posidippus and
Metrodorus respectively. In the first ([Greek: Poien tis biotoio tame
tribon? ]) each kind of life in turn is condemned; in the second each
is defended.
These epigrams were paraphrased in _Tottel's Miscellany_
(1557) by Nicholas Grimald, and again in the _Arte of English Poesie_
(1589), attributed to George Puttenham. Stimulated perhaps by the
latter version, in which the Court first appears as one of the
principal spheres of life, or by Ronsard's French version in which
also the 'cours des Roys', unknown to the Greek poet, are introduced,
Bacon wrote his well-known paraphrase:

The world's a bubble: and the life of man
Less than a span.

It is just possible too that he wrote a paraphrase, similar in verse,
of the second epigram, which I have printed in the article referred
to. A copy of _The World_ was found among Wotton's papers and was
printed in the _Reliquiae Wottonianae_ (1651) signed 'Fra. Lord
Bacon'. It had already been published by Thomas Farnaby in his
_Florilegium Epigrammatum Graecorum &c. _ (1629). Bacon probably gave
Wotton a copy and he appears to have shown it to his friends. Among
these was Thomas Bastard, who, to judge by the numerous epigrams he
addressed to Essex, belonged to the same circle as Bacon, Donne, and
Wotton,--if we may so describe it, but probably every young man of
letters looked to Essex for patronage. Bastard's poem runs:

Ad Henricum Wottonum.

Wotton, the country, and the country swayne,
How can they yeeld a Poet any sense?
How can they stirre him up or heat his vaine?
How can they feed him with intelligence?
You have that fire which can a witt enflame
In happy London Englands fayrest eye:
Well may you Poets have of worthy name
Which have the foode and life of Poetry.
And yet the Country or the towne may swaye
Or beare a part, as clownes do in a play.

Donne was one of those to whom Wotton showed Bacon's poem, and the
result was the present letter which occasionally echoes Bacon's words.