Now what conclusions may be drawn from the foregoing extracts? Bacon attached the greatest importance to the consideration of the internal life of man. He affirms that dramaticall or representative poesy, which brings the world upon the stage, is of excellent use if it be not abused. The discipline of the stage was neglected in his time, but the care of the ancients was that it should instruct the minds of men unto virtue, and wise men and great philosophers accounted it as the musical bow of the mind. He has devoted the fourth part of his "Instauratio Magna" to setting forth examples of inquiry and invention, choosing such subjects as are at once the most noble in themselves and the most different one from another, that there may be an example in every kind. He is not speaking of precepts and rules by way of interpretation, but actual types and models by which the entire process of the mind, and the whole fabric and order of invention, should be set, as it were, before the eyes. Not only should the characters of dispositions which are impressed by nature be received into this treatise, but those also which are imposed upon the mind by sex, by age, by region, by health and sickness, by beauty and deformity, and the like; and, again, those that are caused by fortune, as sovereignty, nobility, obscure birth, riches, want, magistracy, privateness, prosperity, adversity, and the like. _The fourth part of Bacon's "Great Instauration" is missing._ The above requirements are met in the Shakespeare plays. Could the dramas be more accurately described than in the foregoing extracts? From a study of the plays let a list be made out of the qualifications which the author must have possessed. It will be found that the only person in whom every qualification will be found who has lived in any age of any country was Francis Bacon. Any investigator who will devote the time and trouble requisite for an exhaustive examination of the subject can come to no other conclusion. One cannot without feeling deep regret recognise that we have to turn to a foreigner to give "reasons for the faith which we English have in Shakespeare." It was a German, Schlegel, who discovered the great dramatist, and to-day we must turn to his "Lectures on the Drama" for the most penetrating description of his plays. The following is a translation of a passage which in describing the plays almost adopts the words Bacon uses in the foregoing passages as to the scope and object of the fourth part of his "Great Instauration."