Be it understood, I speak of the _form_ of the Platonic mind, not of its logical matter; in point of doctrine, the Homeric faith was no more that of Plato than of Phidias. But these doctrinal or logical differences are far less than the formal and æsthetical affinity. The conceptions of Plato are of Homeric origin. This want of ability to take an historical survey of the world is to be found alike in Bacon and Shakspeare, together with many excellencies likewise common to them both. To the parallel between them--which Gervinus, with his peculiar talent for combination, has drawn in the concluding remarks to his "Shakespeare," and has illustrated by a series of appropriate instances--belongs the similar relation of both to antiquity, their affinity to the Roman mind, and their diversity from the Greek. Both possessed to an eminent degree that faculty for a knowledge of human nature that at once pre-supposes and calls forth an interest in practical life and historical reality. To this interest corresponds the stage, on which the Roman characters moved; and here Bacon and Shakspeare met, brought together by a common interest in these objects, and the attempt to depict and copy them. This point of agreement, more than any other argument, explains their affinity. At the same time there is no evidence that one ever came into actual contact with the other. Bacon does not even mention Shakspeare when he discourses of dramatic poetry, but passes over this department of poetry with a general and superficial remark that relates less to the subject itself than to the stage and its uses. As far as his own age is concerned, he sets down the moral value of the stage as exceedingly trifling. But the affinity of Bacon to Shakspeare is to be sought in his moral and psychological, not in his æsthetical views, which are too much regulated by material interests and utilitarian prepossessions to be applicable to art itself, considered with reference to its own independent value. However, even in these there is nothing to prevent Bacon's manner of judging mankind, and apprehending characters from agreeing perfectly with that of Shakspeare; so that human life, the subject-matter of all dramatic art, appeared to him much as it appeared to the great artist himself, who, in giving form to this matter, excelled all others. Is not the inexhaustible theme of Shakspeare's poetry the history and course of human passion? In the treatment of this especial theme is not Shakspeare the greatest of all poets--nay, is he not unique among them all? And it is this very theme that is proposed by Bacon as the chief problem of moral philosophy. He blames Aristotle for treating of the passions in his rhetoric rather than his ethics; for regarding the artificial means of exciting them rather than their natural history. It is to the natural history of the human passions that Bacon directs the attention of philosophy. He does not find any knowledge of them among the sciences of his time.