Can dogs syllogise? CHAP. VL mingled with the expectation, when Wren and Preston stepped forward to exhibit their dialectical skill. The selection of their thesis was itself singularly happy, when we consider that their first object was to secure the attention of one who combined, somewhat oddly, an almost equal fondness for theological argument and for the hunting-field; and the royal Nimrod roused himself with revived interest when he learned that the quaestio of which the opponent had undertaken to maintain the affirmative, was, 'Whether dogs could make syllogisms'?' The major proposition, present in the mind of a harrier, said Preston, is this: "The hare has gone either this way or that way.' With his nose he smells out the minor: 'She has not gone that way;' and he then arrives at the conclusion: 'Ergo, this way, with open mouth.' 'The instance,' says the narrator, 'suited with the auditory and was applauded, and put the answerer to his distinctions, that dogs may have sagacity, but not sapience,-in things especially of prey and that did concern their belly, might be nasutuli, but not logici,' etc. Preston was hastening to reply by casting his defence into the form of a fresh syllogism, when the moderator, Dr Read, -'no fool Who far from Cambridge kept a school',' interposed. He began to fear that the dispute might descend below the dignity proper to the occasion, and to bethink himself how troublesome a pack of hounds, well followed and applauded, at last might prove.' He accordingly called upon the opponent to proceed with some other argument; and when Preston, feeling that he had the better in the disputation, still urged his reply, he enjoined him to be silent. Royalty to At this point, however, the king, who in his conceit was all the while upon Newmarket heath,' himself intervened and took up the defence of the canine intellect. I had myself,' he the rescue. 1-a question very well suited to the King's love for hunting, and perhaps suggested, either by a pas sage from Chrysippus, in Sir Walter Raleigh's Sceptic (in which the position is aflirmed) or by Montaigne's Apology for Raimond de Sebonde, where he takes occasion to mention this passage in Chrysippus.' Nichols, Progresses, etc. 111 58. Richard Corbet's verses: 800 Nichols, 1 72. Instader Heath said, 'a dog, that straggling far from all his fellows, had light CHAP. VL upon a very fresh scent, but considering that he was all alone, A and had none to second and assist him in it, observes the and place and goes away unto his fellows, and by such yelling arguments as they can best understand, prevailed with a party of them to go along with him, and bringing them unto the place, pursued it unto an open view.' Then turning to the moderator, he begged to know what he could have done in that case better, and desired him that he would either think better of his dogs, or not so highly of himself." 'The opponent also desired leave to pursue the King's game, which he had started, unto an issue; but the answerer protested that his majesties dogs were always to be excepted, who hunted not by common law', but by prerogative. And the moderator, fearing that the King might let loose another of his hounds and make more work, applies himself with all submissive devotion to the King,-acknowledged his dogs were able to outdo him, besought his majesty for to believe they had the better; that he would consider how his illustrious influence had already ripened and concocted all their arguments and understandings; that whereas in the morning, the reverend and grave divines could not make syllogisms, the lawyers could not, nor the physitians', now every dog could, especially his majesties.' 'All men,' continues the narrator, acknowledged that it was a good bit to close with.... The other Acts were easily forgotten, but the discourse and logick of the dogs was fresh in mouth and memory, and the philosophy act applauded universally".' There does not appear to be any evidence to prove that P Francis Bacon was one of those who followed in the royal retinue, but when we consider his intimate relations with Cambridge and that he was at this time attorney-general, it is difficult to suppose that he could have been absent. But whether or not among those who listened to Preston's memorable Act, we can scarcely doubt but that when, five A dexterous appeal to the wellknown royal prejudices. 2 In allusion to the small success that had attended the disputations CHAP. VI. years later, he forwarded to the university the presentation copy of his Novum Organum, along with the admirable. letter in which he begged their acceptance of the volume, not a few readers, as they turned the pages of that epochmaking treatise, and marked the reference to the supposed capacity of animals to syllogize', must have been carried back in memory to the above disputation and the amusement which it created: a still more manifest reference is to be found in another contemporary production,-the treatise of Henry Peacham, already quoted. Peacham was a student at in Trinity College at the time of James' visit; and when we find him sarcastically observing, in relation to the younger members of the undergraduate body, 'that dogges are able to make syllogismes in the fields, when their young masters. can conclude nothing at home", it is scarcely possible to doubt that we have here a direct allusion to the royal criticism at Preston's Act. Evident reference to the quarstio treatise But the Act was altogether eclipsed by the Comedy performed on the second night at Clare Hall, and it will be of service here to give some account of at least one more of these performances before proceeding to speak of the memorable production called forth by James' visit. It is evident that at this period the colleges generally were devoting considerable attention to these compositions, which perhaps afforded a certain outlet for talent which shunned the increasingly perilous arena of theological controversy, although themselves by no means without a certain element The Return of danger. Club Law, performed in 1597', had been succeeded in 1602 by a piece of equal merit and similarly Birken satirical character; this was the well-known Return from Parnassus, performed as a Christmas piece at St John's College, a production which has been pronounced by one critic, perhaps, the most singular composition in our lan from Par Connecting 1 Norum Organum (ed. Fowler), p. 456. 2 Compleat Gentleman, p. 32; sec supri, p. 391. Masters says that one of these plays at Corpus (cire. 1618) 'composed by Sir Hall gave offence to the Marquis of Buckingham and another by Sir Bradrib to the lord chancellor Bacon: but the society were of opinion that neither the one nor the other had any good reason to be offended therewith. Masters-Lamb, p. 161. See supra, pp. 430-1. the pily. guage'. In this, several students of differing capacities and CHAP. V dispositions are represented as quitting the university in order to push their fortunes in the metropolis. One en- Outline of deavours to gain a name by writing books, another to obtain a benefice by paying court to a young gentleman named Amoretto, with whom he had been intimate at college; two others betake themselves in succession to the profession of physicians, actors, and musicians. But the man of genius. meets only with neglect, until he has managed to get prosecuted for one of his productions; the young gentleman of fortune sells his benefice to an illiterate clown; three of the scholars retreat in melancholy dudgeon to the Isle of Dogs; another returns to Cambridge as poor as he left it; while the would-be physicians and musicians finding that neither medicine nor music will support them, resolve to turn shepherds, and to spend the rest of their days on the Kentish downs. Hawkins, in his criticism, praises the variety of the characters in the play, the admirable manner in which they are discriminated, and the sparkling dialogue. One of its top most notable features, however, are the criticisms which the ing the play itself contains on contemporary authors. The name of cach living, or lately living, poet,-Spenser, Constable, Lodge, Daniel, Thomas Watson, Drayton, John Davies, Marston, Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Churchyard, Tom Nashe', and Shakespeare,-is successively pronounced, and evokes his award of praise or censure. And here, notwithstanding the discrimination evinced, it is impossible not to see that academic partialities played a very appreciable part, and poets who had never been within the walls of a university receive but qualified commendation. There was already growing up a spirit of literary as well as of professional rivalry, and to the influence of such feeling we may partly perhaps attribute the fact that Spenser seems, at this time, CHAP. VL to have ranked far higher than Shakespeare' in the estiSpenser mation of Cambridge. It is evident that his melancholy end Shakespeare, had not been noted without sympathy in his university: ranked above the university which it attests as to of impropria tions And yet for all this unregarding soil Scarce deigning to shut up his dying eye. Discontent in But it is the second and fourth acts which more especially illustrate Cambridge university life. In the former we find the system Academico, who represents the poor student, but one of the better class, endeavouring, either by patronage or merit, to obtain a benefice. He is however completely baffled by the prevailing simoniacal practices of the day, and sees Immerito, a dunce who has never been to the university, carrying off the living by paying Sir Raderic, who presents, a hundred pounds. When the bargain has been duly concluded, Recorder, a common lawyer, enters, congratulating Sir Raderic and commending his conduct: 'You do well, Sir Raderic, to bestow your living upon such as will be content to share, and on Sunday say nothing; whereas your proud uni. versity princox thinks he is a man of such merit the world cannot sufficiently endow him with preferment3.' 1 The criticism on Shakespeare presents us with but qualified praise. Judicio says: Who loves Adonis' love or Lucrece' rape, His sweeter verse contains heart-robbing life, | Could but a graver subject him content, Without love's foolish, lazy languishment!' Ibid. 1x 118. This is not very emphatic laudation; and yet nearly all the great poet's masterpieces (excepting, perhaps, Othello, Macbeth, and King Lear) had appeared when the play was first written in 1602,-certainly before its performance in 1606. On the other hand, in another part of the play, Kemp, the actor, is represented as pronouncing the most emphatic eulogium on Shakespeare: Few of the university pen,' he says (in reply to Burbage), play well; they smell too much of that writer Ovid and that writer Metamorphosis, and talk too much of Proserpina and Jupiter. Why, here's our fellow Shakespeare puts them all down-ay, and Ben Jonson too.' Mr Arber, in his edition of the Return from Parnassus (p. xiii) takes this as serious commendation, and as testifying to Shakespeare's 'confessed supremacy at that date, not only over all University dramatists, but also over all the London professional playwrights.' I must confess that it seems difficult to me to understand how a scholar like the author of the Return, could have designed that this commendation, coupled as it is with such gross illiterateness, should be taken by the audience as expressing his own sentiments. He seems to me rather to wish to convey the notion that Shakespeare is the favorite of the rude half-educated strolling players, as distinguished from the retined geniuses of the university. Dodsley, p. 113. 3 Ibid. p. 161. |