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MONTREAL AND ROUSES POINT N Y • LOVELL PRINTING AND PUBLISHING " COMPANY. i8;s. 6^ BIBL/OTHFCA ",»*- Copyright, -O o^ .K^' /^ :?r Lake Shore Press, Rouses Pcnt, N. V. » /ifi^ >y^ r £ C<--^ vT TO THE HONOURABLE SAMUEL CORNWALLIS MONK, ONE OF THE JUSTICES OF HER MAJESTY'S COURT OF APPEALS OF THE PROVINCE OF QUEBEC IN THE DOMINION OF CANADA, TO WHOSE PERSONAL KINDNESS AND ENCOURAGEMENT IN LETTERS THE AUTHOR IS INDEIiTED, THIS BROCHURE IS DE'-DICATED, NOT ONLY AS DIE IN FRIENDSHIP, V.UT ALSO AS A TRIBUTE TO HIS EMINENT ENDOWMENTS, AND TO HIS ATTAINMENTS AS A JURIS-CONSULT, WITH THIS REGRET, THAT THE WORK IS NOT COMMENSURATE WITH THE ESTEEM THE AUTHOR HAS SO LONG HELD FOR ONE SO DISTINGUISHED FOR HIS RIPE AND SOUND SCHOLARSHIP. PREFACE. He who opens this little book under the expectation of finding an exhaustive defence of Shakspere against the " Baconian Theorists,'' and an absolute establishment of his authorship had better close it, because it has no pre- tensions to be a complete thesis on the subject, although the various arguments follow some kind of order, though perhaps, irregular. The writer has simply given expression to his belief in Shakspere as the author of " the best plays in our lan- guage," and his unbelief in Bacon's authorship of them. He lays no claim to originality, because most of his arguments must have presented themselves to many readers and students of both Shakspere and Bacon, though they may not have been publicly expressed. He lays no claim to scholarship, neither is he desirous to appear learned, nor to be puffed up with the vanity of authorship, but he is desirous — as every man should be, to defend his friend from ''■ back-wounding-calumny "" — to IV. PREFACE. shield the character of Shakspere, from the shafts of malice aimed at his reputation as a man and an author. The calumny of Nathaniel Holmes and the " Baconian Theorists " would soon '* starve and die of itself if nobody took it in and gave it lodging ; " but as it is to be found in the libraries of Jurists and Scholars, in the closets of Divines and Students, on the book-shelves of Skeptics, and in the drawing-rooms of the Dilettanti, the writer hopes this plea for Shakspere, will prove an antidote to slander's "poison'd shot." Montreal, February 27, 1875. of 'an dy ncl of id 's BACON vcrsiis SHAKSPERE. Novet int univcrsi per pnsentes. The master-spirits and the most command- ing intellects of the past and present century have with one consent believed that William Shakspere, of Stratford-upon-Avon, in the County of Warwick, gentleman, was the author of the plays collected and published in 1623 by John Heminge and Henry Condell, and humbly consecrated to the most noble and incomparable paire of brethren William, Earle of Pembroke, &c., &c., and Philip, Earle of Montgomery, &c., both Knights of the most noble order of the Garter, and our singular good Lordes, and entitled Mr. William Shakes- peare's Tragedies, Comedies, and Histories published according to the True Originall Copies; notwithstanding, Wm. Hy. Smith, in a letter to Lord Ellesmere, dated 1856, attempted to prove that the plays called Shakspere's were 6 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. written by Bacon, but he did not m. e good his postulate; nevertheless, there has arisen another champion in the seventh decade of the nineteenth century, a giant who has made a challenge against any disciple of Shakspere that would come out and fight him, throwing down the gauntlet with this scoffing, and auda- cious, if not blasphemous utterance : — " We worship in yesns what belongs to Plato; in Shakspere luhat belongs to BcvC^n^ This exalted giant is not singular, but plural : his name is legion. He speaks with authority : he assumes the style and title of Majesty itself. The word WE is a most important sound. This lusty challenger denies the existence of Shakspere as a Dramatist and Poet though it be attested by tradition, testimony, coincidences, and consecrated by time. It has been written "that there shall come in the last days scoffers," and of others, it has been said, that they should have sent " them strong delusion that they should believe a lie." BACON versus SHAKSPERE. ^ Of the temerity of Nathaniel Holmes and other authors of the " Baconian Theory " there can be no doubt, and, perhaps, my temerity will not be questionable if I trespass upon the patience of my readers, after so much has been written on the subject by men who have won their spurs in the lists of English Literature ; yet, I trust in being pardoned for slinging a stone at this " literary Goliath" compared with whom, in hardihood, the most of our modern Shaksperian critics are in point of fact "as that small infantry Warr'd on by cranes." The general and almost universal concession of our modern playwrights and actors of any culture, or note, has been that the author of the plays which common belief and tradition assign to Shakspere, were, and must have been written by a man most thoroughly acquainted with "stage business," therefore, it may be assumed that that man was not Bacon. There are, to my mind, other things to be '^li 8 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. considered which are conclusively against the ''^Baconian Theory','' and though I may not have the gownman's skill, " truth from specious falsehood to divide," I shall endeavour to dis- cuss fairly and dispassionately the obvious im- probabilities of the " theory." Imprimis. — It can be clearly shown b}'' ref- erence to Collier's Annals of the Stage that Heminge and Condell, the friends and fellow- theatrical proprietors, and literary executors of Shakspere, (though not officially appointed,) were well ordered in their behaviour and just in all their dealings. For upwards of thirty years they had lived in good repute, and, doubt- less by inference, they "kept their hands from picking and stealing, and their tongues from evil-speaking, lying and slandering, and did their duty 'n that state of life into which it had pleased God to call them." From their long intimacy with Shakspere, their daily converse with him during the theatrical seasons at the " Globe and Blackfriars," their companionship in travel, their consultations with him relative BACON versus SHAKSPERE. g to readings, cues, and stage business, they must have known whether he was or was not the author of the plays dedicated in 1623 to the Earles Pembroke and Montgomery. If Shaks- pere was not known to them as the author, then they practiced a lie upon those " singular good lordes," for the proper notion of a lie is an endeavouring to deceive another by signifying that to him as true, which we ourselves think not to be so. Who shall dare say Heminge and Condell lied? Could these men be not only deceivers and hypocrites, but ingrates to those " most incomparable paire of brethren," whom no man could " come neare but with a kind of religious addresse," and who " prose- quuted" Shakspere, when living, with so much favour, " using him after their own honour and dignity ! " Was their false dedication fitting to " a payre so carefull to shew their gratitude to both the living and the dead ? "* * Pembroke, the son of Mary, the sister of that chivalrous and truly noble man, Sir Pliilip Sidney, was, according to his biographer, not only a great '4\ 10 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. Ill Could rare Ben Jonson, who is worthy of our love and respect, have lied^ in consequence of the close friendship which existed between Shakspere and himself, when he wrote under Droeshout's print, facing the title page of the 1623 edition, the following significant lines, meagre and generalizing though they be : — favourer of learned and ingenious men, but learned himself. He was universally loved and esteemed, had a good proportion of learning, and a ready wit to apply and enlarge upon it. He had a large fortune, which he used nobly, and as his conversation was most with men of the most pregnant parts and under- standing, he must have known both Shakspere and Bacon, and would at once not only have detected Heminge and Condell's lie, but resented and pun- ished it. Again, Pembroke was very liberal towards literary men, who needed support or encouragement, and doubtless had been munificent to Shakspere and his fellows, judging from Heminge and Condell's "Epistle Dedicatorie" commencing — "Whilst we studie to be thankful in our particular, for the many favours we have received from your Lordeshipes." The " Epistle Dedicatorie " is in itself very strong circumstantial evidence against Nathaniel Holmes' theory — if not absolutely conclusive. BACON versus SHAKSPERE. n " This Figure, that thou here seest put It was for gentle Shakespeare cut ; Wherein the Graver had a strife With Nature to out-doo the life : O, could he but have drawne his wit As well in brasse as he hath hit His face ; the Print would then surpasse All that was ever writ in brasse. But, since he cannot, Reader, looke Not on his picture, but HIS BOOKE." " What a goodly outside falsehood " had when Shakspere, himself, dedicated the first heir of his invention, "VENUS AND ADONIS," to the gallant and literary Henry Wriothesly, Earle of Southampton, a noble- man whose public and private virtues were notorious, and whose liberality to men of genius and learning was one of his highest titles to praise. In reference to the noble Earle's liberality and friendship to Shakspere, Rowe says that there was a story, handed down by Sir William Davenant, that " my Lord Southampton at one time gave Shakspere a thousand pounds to enable him to go through with a purchase !!l 12 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. which he heard he had a mind to." The story, though probable, may want confirmation as to the amount, but whei Shakspere afterwards dedicates to the noble Earle " The Rape of Lucrece" he alludes to his munificence in these words : — " The warrant of your Jioiiourable disposition not the worth of my untutored lines, makes it assured of acceptance. What I have done is yours ; what I have to do is yours ; being in part in all I have, devoted yours." From these sentences it may be inferred that Shakspere had tasted largely of the Earle's bounty. Words of acknowledgment could scarcely be stronger. Did Shakspere practice a deceit upon his noble and generous patron } Could he be guilty of a lie ? Could he make lies his refuge, and under falsehood hide himself to get the bounty of this Earle ? Earl Southampton in a letter, a transcript of which {copia vera), found in the Ellesmere col- lection, writes to some nobleman, in behalf of BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 13 »ry, to •ds of in m it is n the players interested in the " Blackf riars " gene- rally, and of Shakspere and Burbage in par- ticular, at a time when the Lord Mayor of London threatened the destruction of the Blackfriars Play-house : — " These bearers are two of the chief of the "company; one of them, by name Richard " Burbage, who humbly sueth for your Lord- " ship's kind help ; for that he is a man famous " as our English Roscius ; one who fitteth the " action to the word, and the word to the action "most admirably. By the exercise of his " quality, indiistry and good behaviour, he has "become possessed of the Blackfriars Play- " house, which has been employed for plays "sithence it was builded by his father, now " near fifty years agone. " The other is a man no whit less deservincr " favour, and my especial friend; till of late an " actor of good account in the company, now, a " sharer in the same, and writer of some of otir " best English plays, which, as your Lordship " knoweth, were most singularly liked of Queen '4 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. " Elizabeth, when the company was called upon " to perform before Her Majesty at Court at " Christmas and Shrovetide, &c., &c. — both are " right famous in their qualities, though it " longeth not of your Lordship's gravity and " wisdom to resort unto the places where they " are wont to delight the public ear." " Their trust and suit now is not to be " molested in their way of life, whereby they " maintain themselves and their wives and fami- " lies (both being married and of good rcptita- " tioii)^ as well as the luidows and orphans of " some of their dead fellows." This document has been avowed, by those best competent to judge, to be a genuine and authentic manuscript of the period ; if so, what a lesson it conveys to this selfish generation — the true Nobility of aristocracy, and that pure religion which " visits the fatherless and the widows in their affliction." Ben Jonson, envious as he was of Shaks- pere, and even girded at his York and Lan- caster plays, at " The Winter's Tale " and i BACON versus SHAKSPERE. upon rt at 1 are h it and they be hey mf- 'ta- of •se id at 'e le IS " The Tempest ", in the prologue to " Every Man in his Humour," acknowledges Shaks- pere's good qualities as a man in these words : — " I loved the man, and do honour his memory, " on this side idolatry, as much as any ; he was " indeed honest, and of an open and free nature, " had an excellent fancy, brave notions, and "gentle expressions." All who addressed him seem to have uniformly connected his name with the epithets — worthy, gentle and be- loved. Liars are not made out of gentle, worthy and beloved men, possessing also open and free natures. Bacon, in his Essay on Simulation and Dis- simulation, says : — " Certainly the ablest men that ever were, " have all had an openness and frankness of "dealing, and a name of certainty and vera- "city." Now, Shakspere would have been guilty of dissimulation, or rather simulation, by pretend- ing to be the author of the "Venus and 1 i f i 1' 1 ! 1 'f ' 1 i6 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. Adonis " and the " Rape of Lucrece " when he was not. Heminge and Condell would also be guilty of simulation by a suppositious foist- ing upon the Earls of Pembroke and Mont- gomery " The Workes of William Shakes- peare, truly set forth from the originall," if they were not. But the " Baconian Theorists " are honour^ able men, all of them, yet they virtually charge Shakspere, Ben Jonson, Heminge and Condell with being robbers and liars, and my noble and "singular good Lordes," Pembroke, Mont- gomery and Southampton with being abettors and accessories : — * " He that filches from me my good name Robs me of that which not enriches him." Shakspere, Ben Jonson, Heminge and Con- * The honour of these most noble earls is above sus- picion. They could not have been privy to any liter- ary deception. We may as well imagine that Edward Geoffrey Stanley, fourteenth Earl of Derby, or George William Frederic Villiers, Earl of Clarendon, could have been liars and deceivers >aSiMli^!L^l^'L^:2^'i£S£i.'SS:^ when I also f oi st- olon t- akes- 1," if lOLir,- arge idell and ont- tors on- 3US- ter- ard or on, BA CON versus SNA KSPERE. 1 7 dell, who were honourable men in their genera- tion, must have conspired together to rob Bacon of his fame ; and those accomplished scholars and gentlemen Pembroke and Southampton, friends of Bacon's benefactor, Essex, must have been participators in Shakspere's deceit in assuming merits which he did not really possess, if they had the least suspicion in their minds that he was not the author of the plays and poems dedicated to them. What a hypocrite or simulator Ben Jonson must have been, considering his intimacy with Bacon, translating his writings into Latin, to ap- ply to Shakspere, in his glowing eulogy, words due to Bacon; for it is hard to conceive that Bacon could have kept his dramatic writings, poems, and sonnets a secret from Jonson, how- ever much he may have thought such things too frivolous for a great philosopher. What makes the matter look worse is the statement of Nathaniel Holmes, if it is worth anything, wherein he says : — " In fact it would be well-nigh incredible that I i8 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. a scholar like Ben Jonson, who was so famil- iar with Bacon and his writings, as he must have been, should not have discovered the hand and soul of Francis Bacon in these plays of Shakspere as certainly as a Bernouilli the genius of Newton in the anonymous solution of a mathematical problem — ex unque Leoncm — especially when he ventured to write in this manner in the Sonnets : — " Why is my verse so barren of new pride ? So far from variation or quick change ? Why with the time I do not glance aside To new found methods, and to compounds strange ? Why write I still all one, ever the same. And keep invention in a noted weed. That every word doth almost tell my name. Shewing their birth, and where they did proceed ? Sonnet Ixvi. It is not shown that Ben Jonson did make the discovery! Was it from his want of per- ception ? or was it not, the rather, from his cer- tain knowledge that Bacon was not the author of the plays, and that Shakspere was ? — hence no necessity nor opportunity for discovering what never existed ! famil- must 1 the plays i the ution oiicm this BACON versus SHAKSPERE. »9 mge ed? vi. ake per- cer- hor Qce ing Nathaniel Holmes surmises that Bacon had confided his authorship of the Venus and Adonis to a few friends who can keep a secret, and intimates, or rather insinuates, that South- ampton will not object to the use of his name to the dedication, and Shakspere will be ready to appear as the autho. of these poems. The chivalrous high-souled Southampton, and the great Shakspere dissemblers ! This maligning of the dead is monstrous, and makes one feel as indignant as Emilia was when Othello sus- pected the chastity of Desdemona. Now for Jonson's eulogy, ending thus : — Shine forth thou star of poets ; and with rage, Or influence, chide, or cheer, the drooping stage ; Which, since thy flight from hence, hath mourn'd like night, And despairs day, but for thy volume's light." I believe it to be the genuine welling-up of Jonson's overcharged heart; his spring of gratitude for Shakspere's kindness and magna- nimity in obtaining a first hearing of " Every Man in his Humour," and his painstaking in not only bringing the play before the public, Ill 20 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. but acting a part in it, together with Burbage, Heminge, and Condell ; otherwise the play would in all probability have been consigned to " Limbo Patrum',' and had no " other au- dience but the Tribulation of Tower Hill, or tlie limbs of Limehouse, their dear broth- ers."* Shakspere's plays at this time filled the theatre, while Jonson's would hardly pay expenses. This magnanimity of Shakspere's finds almost its expression in his Hamlet, Act II. Sc. 2 : — " The less they deserve, the more merit in your botmty ; " which is a pearl of most noble and generous sen- timent, worthy to be treasured in our minds — the divine lesson of Charity — no indwelling of Jonson's envious girds, but the rather over- coming unkindness with kindness. Of suck tnagnanimity dissembling is 7tot begotten. What does Milton, that large-hearted Puri- Henry VIII., Act V. Sc. 3. BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 21 m I tan * and the writer of England's noblest Epic, say in that magnificent eulogy of his, appended to the folio 1632 : — " What neede my Shakespeare for his honour'd bones The labour of an Afje in piled stones, Or that his hallow'd Reliques should be hid Under a star-y pointing Pyramid? Dear Sonne of Memory, great Heire of Fame, What needst such dull witness of thy Name ? Thou in our wonder and astonishment Hast built thyselfe a lasting Monument : For whilst, to th' shame of slow-endeavouring Art, Thy easie numbers flow, and that each heart Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued Booke Those Delphicke Lines with deep Impression tooke ; Then thou, our fancy of herself bereaving, Dost make us Marble with too much conceiving ; And, so Sepulcher'd, in such pompe dost lie, That Kings for such a Tombe would wish to die." Could Milton have had any doubt what manner of man Shakspere was? Would he not, writing within a few years of Shakspere 's death, have had a better knowledge of the * The word is not used in the sense that ibe author of Hudibras employs — but in its pure significance — pure-minded man. J= -n^"- i iti II Ijf ,lji :!i! !i( 22 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. authorship than the " Baconian Theorists ? " Milton, as a poet, scarcely rivalled by Homer and Virgil, a man of immense learning and erudition, a mathematician, a logician, a master of the Greek and Latin languages, a man with a quick apprehension, a sublime imagination and a piercing judgment, would, from his knowledge of the writings of both Shakspere and Bacon, have discovered what our literary Goliath imagines he has so cleverly, namely: — such a similarity or similitude in thought, diction, style, manner and language between the Phi- losopher and the Poet, that Bacon must have been Shakspere, but Milton evidently did not make the discovery. Again, could Milton have had any doubt that William Shakspere, in his lifetime, an actor and playwright in company with Heminge and Condell at the Blackfriars theatre, and, at his death, buried in the chancel of the Church of Holy Trinity, Stratford-on- Avon, was the author of the '■^Midsummer Night's Dream,'' which afforded him so much delight that he should apply these words, or ! Mil BACON versus SHAKSPERE. rists?" Homer ig and master with a )n and v'ledge 3acon, roliath iich a ction, ; Phi- have i not have n his pany Friars incel d-on- n,mer luch 3, or 23 rather epithets, to Shakspere — " dear Sonne of Memory " — " honour'd bones " — " Hallow'd Reliques " — the word hallowed is rarely, if ever, applied by English scholars to other than holy and sanctified beings and places. Hallowed* only occurs five times in Milton's " Paradise Lost." t Milton means what he says ; and means it with his strength too, he is not a loose writer ; " he," as Ruskin says, " generally puts the whole strength of his spirit into his sayings," and there is something very potent and significant in the last monosyllabic line of his eulogy, " That Kings for such a Tombe would wish to dier A well known American authoress % has * The word is rarely used in the Bible, once only in the New Testament. The Sabbath is hallowed, and things pertaining to the Temple, and the name of " Our Father who art in Heaven," fBook III. 31 ; Book IV. 964; Book V. 321 ; Book VII. 592 ; Book XL 106. tMrs. H. B. Stowe. 24 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. i Hill !l: noticed the similitude between certain passages in " Lycidas " and " Comus " and the " Mid- summer Night's Dream ; " she says : — " In his earlier poems, Milton seems, like Shakspere, to have let his mind run freely, as a brook warbles over many-coloured pebbles; whereas in his great poem he built after models. Had he known less Latin and Greek, the world, instead of seeing a well arranged imitation of the ancient epics from his pen, vv^ould have seen inaugurated a new order of Poetry." The Rev. Thomas Warton says there is good reason to suppose that Milton threw many additions and corrections into the Theatrum Poetarum, a book published by his nephew, Edward Philips, in 1675. ^^ contains criticisms far above the taste of that period. Among these is the following judgment on Shakspere, which was not then the general opinion : — " In trag- edy, neyer any expressed a more lofty and tragical height, never any represented nature more purely to the life ; and where the polish- ments of art are most wanting, as probably his 111;! BACON versus SHAKSPERE, 25 learning was not extraordinary, he pleases with a certain wild and 7iative elegance." This certainly smacks of Milton's " sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, Warbles his native wood notes wild." Such a parallel in Bacon to Shakspere as wild and native elegance, to native woods notes wild, would be an argument with Nathaniel Holmes to assert Bacon's authorship of both. Stevens asks : — What greater praise can any poet have received than that of the author of Paradise Lost.-* I may ask who could be a better judge as to the real authorship of the plays ? Could Milton have" been deceived } Francis Meres, a contemporary of Shaks- pere's, published in 1598 a work called '' Pal- ladis Tamia " — Wit's Treasury — in one division or chapter of which, is " A comparative dis- course of our English Poets with the Greek, Latin and Italian Poets. In this discourse, the first criticism on Shakspere that ever appeared in print, occurs the following : — ii . 111'! ^ ^11 9$ BACON versus SH A KSP ERE. " As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the " best for Comedy and Tragedy among the " Latines : so Shakespeare among the English " is the most excellent in both kinds for the " stage ; for Comedy, witness his Gentlemen of " Verona., his Errors, his Love labors lost., his " Love labours wonne, his Midsummers night " drcame ; & his Merchant of Venice : for " Tragedy his Richard ii, Richard Hi, Henry " iv, King John, Titus Andronicus., and his " Romeo & Jtiliet. Richard Grant White, in his Memoirs of Shakspere, says : — " Meres was a Master of Arts in both Universities, and a theological writer, etc. His comparative discourse makes no pretence to analysis or esthetic judgment, but it may be accepted as a record of the estimation in which Shakespeare was held by intelligent and cultivated people when he was thirty-four years old, and before he had written his best plays ". In the discourse of Meres, comparisons are instituted between Horace and Sir Philip ^1 "I'M BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 37 Sidney, Shakspere, Spenser, Drayton and Warner ; between the Greek and Latin Tragic poets and Shakspere, Jonson, Chapman, Dray- ton and Marlovv ; * oetween the Greeks famous for Elegie and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, Sir Thomas Wyat the Elder, Sir Walter * As the Greeke tongue is made famous and elo- quent by Horner, Hcsiod, Euripides, JEscJiilus, So- pJiocles, Pindarus, PJiocylides, and Aristophanes ; and the Latine tongue by Virgill, Ovid, Horace, Silius Italictis, Lncanus, Lucretius, Anson ins, and Claiid- ianns : so the English tongue is mightily enriched, and gorgeouslie invested in rare ornaments and re- splendent abiliments b)- Sir PJtilip Sidney, Spencer, Daniel, Drayton, Warner, Shakespeare, Marhn<.\ and Chaptnan. As Epius Stolo said, that the Muses would speak with Plautns tongue, if they would speak Latin : so I say that the Muses would speak with Shakespeare's fine filed phrase, if they would speake English. As Pindarns, Anacreon, and Callimachus among the Greekes ; and Horace and Catullus among the Latines are the best Lyrick Poets : so in this faculty the best among our Poets are Spencer (who excelleth in all kinds) Daniel, Drayton, Shakespeare, Bretton. » 28 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. Raleigh, Sir Edward Dyer, Shakspere, Spenser and others ; but not Francis Bacon, M. P. Queen's Counsel extraordinary, age 38 years ; his name appears nowhere in Meres's Discourse. Wherefore ? echo says Wherefore ? — Be- cause, according to Nathaniel Holmes, he had no desire to be classed with such a Glorious Company of Poets, but the rather that his fame should rest upon his scientific and philo- sophical works, which, in my opinion it ab- solutely does, and upon nothing else — surely the threading the labyrinth of all philosophy and scaling with ladders the heights of the empyrean is glory enough for one mortal. John Weever in a small bundle of E PI- GRAMMES, in the 'oldest cut and newest fashion, published in 1599, has the following: — Epig. 22. Ad Gulielntum Shakespeare. Honie-tongVl Shakespeare, when I saw thine issue, I swore Apollo got them and none other, Their rosie-tainted features cloth'd in tissue, Some heaven born goddesse said to be their mother : Rose-checkt Adonis with his amber tresses, Faire fire-hot Venus charming him to love her, I 111 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. Spenser ti, M. P. » years ; scourse. ? /—Be- he had jlorious lat his I philo- it ab- -surel)' 3S0ph}' of the • EPI- lewest 29 Chaste Lucretia virgine-likc her dresses, Prowd lust-stung Tarquine seeking still to prove her : Jiomea, Richard ; more, whose names I know not, Their sugred tongues, and power attractive beuty Say they are Saints, althogh that Sts they show not, For thousands vowes to them subjective dutie : They burn in love thy childre Shakcspcar het the Go, wo thy Muse more Nymphish brood beget them. In a work entitled " the Excellencie of the English tongue, by R. C. of Anthony, Esquire to W. C," written about 1595-6, and inserted by W. Camden after his Chapter on " Languages," in " Rcmaines concerning Britaine," p. 43 Lon- don by John Legatt, 16 14 [40 C. 57. Art. Seld : Press-mar/c] (Not in the first edition 1605.) — i*e- printed by the New Shakspere Society under the heading " Shakspere A Ihision-Books' — Rich- ard Carew, the author, says : — " The long words that we borrow being intermingled with the short of our owne store, make up a perfect har- monic, by culling out from which mixture (with judgement) you may frame your speech accord- ing to the matter you must worke on, majesti- call, pleasant, delicate, or manly more or lesse, in what sort you please. Adde hereunto, that 30 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. : i 1 1 I ■ i whatsoever grace any other language carrieth in Verse or Prose, in Tropes or Metaphors, in Ecchoes and Agnominations, they may all bee lively and exactly represented in ours : will you have Platoes Veine ? reade Sir Thomas Smith, — the lonicke} Sir Thomas Moore. Cic crocs ? Ascham, Varro 1 Chaucer, Demosthenes ? Sir John Checke (who in his treatise to the Rebels, hath comprised all the figures of Rhetorick). Will you reade Virgill ? take the Earle of Surrey. Catullus Shakespheare, and Barlowes fragment, Ovid? Daniell, Lucan ? Spencer, Martial ? Sir John Davies and others ." * * Richard Carew, who doubtless was a reader and a scholar has no comparison for Bacon — his name is not mentioned at this date 1595-6 — although 36 years of age. He evidently had produced nothing worthy the encomiums of his contemporaries up to that time — He only received his degree of M. A. — and that hon- orary — on the 27th of July, 1594 — his first instalment of the Essays were not pubhshed before 1598 — The same year, according to Francis Meres, as before quoted, Shakspere had written 6 comedies and 6 tragedies. 11 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 31 In WILLOBIE HIS AVISA, or the true picture of a modest Maid and of a cliasi and constant wife, imprinted at London by John Windct, 1594, Shakspere's Lucrece is thus alluded to : Though Collatine have deerely bought ; To high renowne, a lastmg life, And found, that most in vaine have sought, To have a Faire, and Constant wife. Yet T arquyne p/ucht his glistering grape. And Shake-speare,/rt////j/^en in honour of the marriage of the Princess on the 20th of Febru- ary, 16 1 2-1 3, by the gentlemen of Gray's Inn and the Inner Temple, when he, according to Wm. Aldis Wright, but Collier does not say so, was tlie contriver of the Device, which represented the marriage of the Thames and the Rhine. At Shrovetide, the day of the wedding, Sun- day the 14th, there was -^ masque at the ex- pense of the Court, wi i by Dr. Campion. Another was given by the gentlemen of the Middle Temple and Lincoln's Inn on the 15th, upon which occasion George Chapman's mem- orable masque was selected. In the next year (Dec. 9th, 16 13) Bacon hav- ing been made Attorney General in the pre- ceding October, prepared at his own cost and charges a masque for the delectation of King James. The expenses attending it amounted to 2,000 pounds sterling (equal to about 40,000 dollars) an enormous and extravagant amount fW» BACON versus SHAh'SPERE. 49 for the dumb-show. Bacon declined to accept a contribution towards it of 500 pounds from Gray's Inn, and Mr. Yelverton. This lavish expenditure has in it a kind of obsequiousness, a sort of pandering to the weakness and vanity of the King. The year after, on Twelfth night, the gentle- men of Gray's Inn, under the patronage of Sir Francis Bacon, and upon the occasion of the marriage of the Duke of Somerset, exhibited a " Masque of Flowers" which was printed and dedicated by the authors to the Very Honour- ai le Sir Francis Bacon, His Majesty's Attor- ney General. The Attorney General does not figure as an author in any of the masques of this period, although Spedding believes that fragments of a masque, in a bundle of the Lambeth MSS. in which were found the speeches for the Essex Masque, bear the impress of Bacon's mind, al- though they are without date, title, heading, but simply are in the hand writing of that age. Here again is all conjecture ! But a Latin quo- ll; Hi so BACON versus SHAKSPERE. tation appears in the fragment, and the " Essex Masque," that which the poet saith was never granted ^^Amare et Sapere\'^ which also is quoted in Bacon's Essay of Love : — " Amare et Sapcre vix Deo conceditur," and because the ancient adage is introduced into the " Troilus and Cressida," Act III. 2, in these Hues : — " But you are wise, Or else you love not ; for to be wise and love Exceed man's might ; that dwells with gods above," Ergo — Bacon is the author of " Troilus and Cressida" — prodigious! — It has not yet been shown that he was the author of a Masque, much less a Tragedy ! Nathaniel Holmes says it is historically hiow7i that Bacon wrote sonnets to Elizabeth, and Masques and Devices to be enacted before her, and that both she and James knew that he was the author of many plays enacted before them, and that he took a leading part in the actual composition of the magnificent dramatic entertainments got up for the Royal amuse- ment ; but Nathaniel Holmes gives no author- til BACON versus SHAKSPERE. SI ity for the statement. It is strange that Col- lier, in his exhaustive volumes, The Annals of the Stage, the completest epitome of the kind, has not the slightest reference to Bacon, in any masque or play, or interlude, save " the Misfor- tunes of Arthur " in which he assisted to get up the " inexplicable dumb-shows I " neither does Nathaniel Holmes give the name of one of Bacon's masques written by himself, nor the time nor place of their exhibitions, nor who were the spectators ; yet, he would have the world to believe that there were private reasons why Bacon's authorship should not be divulged, but he does not give Bacon's reasons, nor any others satisfactory to my mind. I am yet at a loss to conceive the reason why Bacon should withhold his authorship, if Elizabeth and James and their courtiers knew him to be a writer of sonnets, masques, plays, &c. Again, he knowing the delight the Queen and King took in these matters, I should have thought his obsequiousness, if not his desire for posthu- mous fame, which some more hunt for than the W. i f 52 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. \ grace of God, would have made him reveal his authorship, in order to have said of him " Be sure {pur Bacon) thou cans't never die But, crown'd with laurel live eternally ;" and to have taken to himself the encomiums of Francis Meres that his productions ranked with those of Seneca and Plautus. Bacon's own words, in his apology in the matter of the estrangement of Essex, are : — " I ever set this down, that the only course to be held with the Queen, was by obsequi- ousness, and observance^ In the first book of the Advancement of Learning, he says : — " in regard of the love and reverence towards learning, which the example ana countenance of two so learned princes, Queen Elizabeth and your Majesty, being as Castor and Pol- lux, lucida sidera, stars of excellent light and most benign influence, hath wrought in all men of place and authority." Let any one read the dedication of Bacon to King James of his Advancement of Learn- ing, and he must be struck with it's syoophan- ■• i I BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 53 tish and fulsome adulation — a few lines will do : — " I have been touched, yea, and possessed with an extreme wonder at those your virtues and faculties, which the Philosophers call intellectual; the luigeness of your capacity, the faithfulness of your memory, the swiftness of your apprehension, the penetration of your judgment, and the facility and order of your elocution. ****** j ^^^ ^yg|] assured that this which I shall say is no amplification at all, but a positive and measured truth ; which is, that there hath not been since Christ's time any King or temporal monarch, which hath been so learned in all literature and erudition, divine and htiman." Such a dedi- cation as this may account, to a certain extent, for Charles Kingsley's sweeping assertion against James : — " If to have found England ore of the greatest countries in Europe, and to have left it one of the most inconsiderable and despicable ; if to be fooled by flatterers to the top of his bent, until he fancied him- self all but a god, while he was not even a iHi 54 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 11 ''J man, and could neither speak the truth, keep himself sober, nor look on a f' awn sword without shrinking." Macaulay says of him : — " His cowardice, his childishness, his ped- antry, his ungainly person and manner, his provincial accent^ made him an object of de- rision ^ David Hume says of him : — ^' His learning bordered on pedantry^ his pacific disposition on pusillanimity, his wisdom on cunnmg, his friendship on light fancy and boyish fondness." This will be sufficient to establish Bacon's obsequiousness, without using his own words in his apology: — " I ever set this down, that the only course to be held with the Queen was by obsequious- ness and observance^ Mark the contrast between the play actor and young poet's manly dedications * of the * See any good edition of the Poems and of Bacon. >l I ! !i! BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 55 " Venus & Adonis " and " Lucrece " to the Earl of Southampton, and Bacon's dedica- tion of the " Advancement of Learning " to King James; it is as apparent as the differ- ence between the absolute poetry of Bacon, and the poetry of Shakspere, which will pres- ently be shown. Bacon's desire for posthumous fame is best expressed in his own words : — " I account the use that a man should seek of the publishing of his own writings before his death to be but an untimely anticipation of that which is proper to follow a man, and not to go along with him." In a letter to Mr. Toby Matthew in 1623, (the year of Heminge & Condell's Folio edit- tion of Shakspere), he writes : — " It is true my labours are now most set to have those works which I have formerly pub- lished, as that of " Advancement of Learning," that of Henry VII., that of the Essays, being retractate and made more perfect, well trans- lated into Latin b_y the help of some good m I ,M l'.:}. S6 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. u pens which forsake me not. For these mod- ern languages will, at one time or other, play the bankrupt with books ; and since I have lost much time with this age, / would be glad to recover it with posterity. In his dedication of the 1625 edition he says : — " I do now publish my Essays, which of all my other works have been most current. For that as it seems, they come to men's business and bosoms. I have enlarged them both in number and weight; so that indeed they are a new work. I thought it therefore agreeable to my affection and obligation to your Grace, to prefix your name before them, both in English and Latin. For I do conceive that the Latin volume of them {being hi the universal language)* may last as long as books last." * The desire for fame is so strong, that he must have his writings put in a language known to all scholars, irrespective of their nationality. Would the writing of Shakspere's plays have been time lost with this age ? Would they be considered as "but toys to come" amongst his essays ? BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 57 I Would that the author of the plays called Shakspere's, and which, despite the " Theo- rists," will, unless they can get better evidence to the contrary, ever be considered his, had during his lifetime made a collection of his works and rescued those that were published in 1623, from the depravations that obscure them ; thereby securing for them a better des- tiny by giving them to the world in their genuine state. Would he had been as jealous of his literary reputation as the author of the " Essays " there would have been an end, or rather no beginning of the jargon that has been written about them; for as Samuel Tay- lor Coleridge felicitously remarks : — " If all that has been written upon Shakspere by English- men " {and now latterly by some Americans^ "were burned in the want of candles, merely to enable us to read one-half of what our Dram- atist produced, we should be gainers. Provi- dence has given England the greatest man that tf] s ^■ The parenthesis is mine. n i.a or 58 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. ever put on and off Mortality, and has thrown a sop to the envy of other nations, by inflicting upon his native country the most incompetent critics." True, Coleridge, — True, — but alas ! Shaks- pere had no desire for fame — " that glorious immortality of true greatness " That lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes, And perfect witness of all judging Jove." I cannot see why Bacon, if he was a poet could have objected to be found in company with Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, and Sir Thomas Wyatt, who have been reputed " the two chief lanterns of light to all others that have since employed their pens upon English poesie ; " or with Edward Vere, Earl of Oxford ; or Fulke Greville, Lord Brook ; or Sir Walter Raleigh ; or Sir Philip Sidney ; or Sir Henry Wotton ; or Sir John Harrington ; and other no- ble and titled poets of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, though he may have objected to be found in the company of the rank and file h BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 59 composed of Chapman, Shakspere, Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Massinger and Marlowe * The reason for concealment most obvious to my mind is that Bacon was not a Poet. If he were, how is it that he, being 'notoriotisly given to write sonnets to his "mistress Eliza- beth's eye-brow," should have left no record of them. If he had written sonnets to the Virgin Queen, where are they ? Nathaniel Holmes says : — " It was probably not an uncommon thing for manuscript sonnets to be circulating among great persons at this time. Indeed, we positively know that Bacons sonnets did pass from hand to hand in that manner'.' If so, as the statement is very authoritative, how chances it that none were saved } Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Walter * Was it done out of deference to his bitterest enemy Lord Coke ? whose deliberate opinion was that play-writers, and stage-players were as fit subjects for the grand jury as vagrants, and " that the fatal end of these five is beggary — the Alchemist, the Informer, the Concealer, the Monopotext, and the Poetaster." fli' i ■ 6o BACON versus SHAKSPERE. Raleigh wrote sonnets — some of these have been saved. In Ellis's volumes of the Early English Poets, to which is prefixed an historical sketch of the Rise and Progress of the English Language, there is not a vestige of the Poetry of Francis Bacon — not a single couplet or line, although Ellis gives specimens of upwards of fifty writers of poetry who flourished in the reigns of Elizabeth and James, among them, strange to say, Wm. Herbert, Earl of Pem- broke, one of the "singular good Lordes" to whom the 1623 Folio was dedicated, and also Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, for whom Bacon claims to have written sonnets and addressed them in the Earl's name to Queen Elizabeth. Where are these sonnets written by Bacon for Essex ? The omission of Bacon's name in the vol- umes of Ellis cannot arise from oversight on the part of that careful compiler. Was it from Ellis's ignorance of Bacon's poetry ? or, was it from his want of sagacity and perception !l BA CON versus SNA KSPERE. 6 x in not discovering Bacon's wonderful poetic genius? Again, it is strange that Warton, in his val- uable and interesting History of English Poetry from the nth to the 17th century, is equally reticent ; Francis Bacon is not even mentioned by name. More puzzling, many of Bacon's writ- ings have been saved and published, but not, as far as I can learn, one line of his blank verse. No " sugared sonnets," nor " honied poems,'' have ever been discovered in Bacon's hand wri- ting, though his correspondence was immense. His published letters make up two octavo volumes. He corresponded largely with emi- nent scholars on questions of erudition and philosophy, as well as with personal friends in exchanging the greetings and courtesies of private life. His letters are very valuable both as illustrating the inner working of his own mind, and as affording important informa- tion concerning those great political and social questions on which he was consulted by all parties in the nation. He left a collection of 69 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. apothegms, containing facetious anecdotes, some piquant and sprightly in the highest degree. Therefore, it is strange that there has not been found any poetry Hke that of Shakspere's, inter- spersed with his correspondence. Could he not say of some friend, when writing to an- other friend : — or, or, or. or, or. " He hath a tear for pity, and a hand Open as day for melting charity." ** O, what a deal of scorn looks beautiful In the contempt and anger of his lip ! " " His life was gentle ; and the elements So mix'd in him, that Nature might stand up And say to all the world ' This was a man 1 ' " " Patience and sorrow strove, Who should express her goodliest." " Age cannot wither her, nor ^nstom stale Her infinite varie* Je u the .ose Of youth yx\, ,\.\ him.' or, or, or. or, or. BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 63 " Her voice was ever soft, Gentle, and low — an excellent thing in woman." " A man that Fortune's buffets and rewards Hast ta'en with equal thanks." " A merrier man. Within the limit of becoming mirth, I never spent an hour's talk withal." " He draweth out the thread of his verbosity Finer than the staple of his argument." i I |i "In his brain, Which is as dry as the remainder biscuit After a voyage, he hath strange places cramm'd With observation, the which he vents In mangled forms." Poets were not mean creatures ; the Apos- tle Paul quotes them, in these memorable lines, " For in Him (GOD) we live, move and have our being, as certain of your poets have said." Bacon could not have objected to being 64 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. considered a poet, judging from his own opin- ions upon the value of Poetry ! * " Because the acts and' events of true " history have not that magnitude which satis- " fieth the mind of vci2cci^ poesy feigneth acts and " events greater and more heroical. Because " true history propoundeth the successes and " issues of actions not so agreeable to the " merits of virtue and vice, therefore poesy " feigns them more just in retribution and more "according to revealed providence. Because " true history representeth actions and events " more ordinary and less interchanged, therefore " poesy endueth them with more rareness and " alternative variations. So as it appeareth that ''''poesy serveth and conferreth to magnanimity^ " morality, and to delectation. And therefore it " was ever thought to have some participation " of divineness, because it doth raise and erect " the mind, by submitting the shows of things " to the desires of the mind ; whereas reason * Advancement of Learning, B. ii. BACON vprsns SHAKSPERE. . 65 " doth buckle and bow the mind unto the na- "ture of things."* * To what in Poetry belongeth this "participation of divineness ? " — Is it not its Creative power, such as is found in Homer, Dante, Shakspere, and Mihon ? But not to one in this benighted age Is that diviner inspiration giv'n That burns in Shakspere's or in Milton's page The pomp and prodigality of Heav'n. Gray. John Sterling must have thought that the plays of Shakspere had a touch of this " diviner inspiration " when he says, that " if in the wreck of Britain, and all she has produced, one creation of her spirit could be saved by an interposing Genius, to be the endowment of a new world, it would be the volume that contains them." Carlyle says " there are passages in Shakspere that come unto you like splendour out of Heaven ; bursts of radiance, illuminating the very heart of the thing," The " diviner inspiration " is not manifested in Bacon's paraphrastic version of the seven Psalms dedicated to " his very good friend," Mr. George Her- bert. iii»^ 60 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. The desertion of Bacon's defence to the charge of bribery and corruption against him while holding the ofifice of Lord Chancellor, and his avoidance of trial are mysteries not yet solved ; and the reasons for his not wishing to be thought a Poet, such as Shakspere, are also mysterious and incapable of solution; that is upon the assumption that he was a Poet, and expressed the wish not to be so considered. Let us now test his qualifications, or give a " taste of his quality" as a Poet. Nathaniel Holmes says : — " Bacon's versions of the Psalms were the amusement of his idle hours, and that certainly nothing very great or brilliant should be looked for in these mere translations into verse. In idea and sentiment he was abso- lutely limited to the original Psalm ; nor could he have much latitude of expression ; besides large allowance must be made for the necessary difference between the young and strong im- agination of ' The Lunatic, The Lover and The Poet' of the Midsummer Night s Dream, of the man lilll' il BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 67 of thirty-three, and the more compounded age and the lassitude of the sick old man of sixty- five." Nevertheless, Nathaniel Holmes, who wishes to be consistent in his " theory," says a few pages preceding : — " Towards the close of Bacon's life, he is now working in good earnest for the next ages, first revising, finishing and republishing his former works, and then devot- ing the remainder of life to his greater philo sophical labours." Not bad work for his " more compounded age." Let us turn to the CIVth Psalm, full of majesty addressed to JEHOVAH as Creator of the World, a psalm of which Humboldt said : — " it presents a picture of the entire Cosmos, and we are astonished to see within the compass of a Poem of such small dimen- sions, the Universe, the Heavens, and the Earth drawn with a few grand strokes." Take for instance Verses 3, 4 and 5 : — ■ "Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters: Who maketh the clouds his chariot : Who walketh upon the wings of the ^ |f" j If '' ll 1 ir 68 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. wind : Who maketh his angels spirits ; and his ministers a flaming fire. Who laid the foun- dations of the earth, that it should not be removed for ever. " Poor Bacon limited to such expressions as these ! * Let us see what Shakspere has produced in the way of analogy or similitude ; open your Romeo and Juliet at Act II., Sc. i., and you will find this glorious passage : — " Thou art As glorious to this night, being o'er my head, As is a winged messenger of Heaven * His translation or paraphrastic version is limited in expression : — " Vaulted and arched are his chamber beams Upon the seas, the waters and the streams ; The clouds as chariots swift to scour the sky ; The stormy winds upon their wings do fly. His Angels spirits are, that wait his will As flames of fire his anger they fulfil. In the beginning, with a mighty hand He m^.de the Earth by counterpoise to stand, Nevei 3 move, but to be fixed still ; Yet hath no pillars but his sacred will." BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 69 Unto the white-upturned wondering eyes Of mortals, that fall back to gaze on him When he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds And sails upon the bosom of the air." In the 25th and 26th verses of the same Psalm, the Psalmist casts glances upon the ships, the Ocean, and " the Leviathan made to play therein," and Bacon gives us this line, the only one Nathaniel Holmes quotes : — " The greater navies look like walking woods." How a true Poet, not a verse maker, 'could venture to put into rhyme such a sublime Psalm as the CIVth, and other magnificent lyrical raptures with which the Book of Psalms continually teems, I am at a loss to conceive ; he may as well attempt to put the gorgeous natural descriptions of Job, or the prophecies of that " mighty orb of song," the Divine Isaiah, into rhyme. It has been wisely said : — " Every attempt to clothe the sacred scripture in verse, (rhyme) ? will have the effect of misrepresent- ing and debasing the original." My Lord Bacon has most certainly grossly jiiiiSi;: 70 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. misrepresented the dignity of the original, judg- ing from his versification of the XCth Psalm — made by the Church of England a part of "The Order for the Burial of the Dead," doubt- less from its containing such a most affecting description of man's mortal and transitory state. Our English translation of the verses par- aphrased by Bacon is as follows : — " LORD, thou hast been our dwelling place in " all generations. Before the mountains were " brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the " earth and the world, even from everlasting to " everlasting. Thou art GOD. Thou turnest man " to destruction ; and sayest, Return, ye children " of men. For a thousand years in Thy sight are " but as yesterday when it is past, and, as a watch " in the night. Thou carriest them away as with " a flood ; they are as a sleep : in the morning " they are like grass which groweth up. in the " morning it flourisheth, and groweth up ; in the " evening it is cut down and withereth. For all " our days are passed away in thy wrath : We " spend our years as a tale that is told." -iA ^M^-f^ .yft p^Y>sHB HiH ^m \ i f! ! \ : ; 1 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. Now for Bacon's metrical version : 71 *' O Lord thou art our home, to whom we fly, And so hast always been from age to age : Before the hills did intercept the eye, Or that the frame was up of earthly stage, One God thou wert, and art, and still shalt be ; Both Death and Life obey Thy holy lore. And visit in their turns, as they are sent ; A thousand years with Thee they are no more Than yesterday, which, ere it is, is spent : Or as a watch by night, that course doth keep. And goes, and comes, unawares to them that sleep." This specimen is selected by Nathaniel Holmes for its elegance, its rhythmic flow, its pathetic sweetness, and its similitude to Shaks- pere in the expression and use of words, and he instances the following lines of Bacon's para- phrase *' As a tale told, which sometime men attend, • And sometimes not, our life steals to an end."* as a parallel to the following from ShaksjDere : — ^^. . " Life is as tedious as a twice told tale , . . * In the New England Primer we find such poetry, - • " Our days begin with trouble here, Our life is but a span. And cruel death is always near, .7 ■: So frail a thing is man." •.■•! .'tu ": i 72 and BACON versus SHAKSPERE. Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man." King John Act iii. 4 " Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more : it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury Signifying nothing." Macbeth Act V. 5 The original version in our Prayer Book is as follows : — " For when Thou art angry, all our days are gone : we bring our years to an end, as it were a tale that is told." There is nothing great or brilliant about this translation of the XCth Psalm. How un- like is the reflection of the Psalmist's poetic fire upon Bacon, compared with the effect it pro- duced upon Milton, in the hymn which he ascribes to our first parents ; or upon Thomson, in the hymn with which he closes the " Sea- sons ;" or upon Coleridge, in the great Psalm which swelled from his harp, as he struck it to the music of the Arveiron, and in the light of the morning-star ; or upon St. John of Damas- cus, in the celebrated hymn sung after mid- ii BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 73 night on Easter morning, during the symbolic ceremony of lighting the tapers ; one verse of which, I cannot refrain from quoting as a contrast to Bacon's XCth. Now let the heavens be joyful ; let earth her song begin ; Let the round world keep triumph, and all that is therein ; Invisible or visible, their notes let all things blend ; For Christ the Lord hath risen, our joy that hath no end ! Nathaniel Holmes can be ingenuous as well as ingenious. He alludes to Bacon's metrical version of the Psalms, giving the world to un- derstand that the Philosopher had compiled in metre the Book of Psalms, whereas he only wrote a paraphrastic version of seven of the Psalms of David. Here are four of Bacon's line's from his translation of the CI Vth Psalm : — " Father and King of Pow'rs, both high and low. Whose sounding fame all creatures serve to blow ; My soul shall with the rest strike up Thy praise And carol of Thy works and wondrous ways ; " these refer to the first Verse, which is here given from the original : — " Bless the Lord, O my Soul. O Lord my God, !• 'I 74 BACON versus SHAK'SPERE. thou art very great; Thou art clothed with honour and majesty." Bacon, here, with his ''Line upon Line'' is far behind his contemporaries, and he does not shine forth as brightly as in his prose, which is, at times, full of poetic beauty ; his rhyme in this instance has taken away all the Psalmist's ecstasy, much in the same way that Pope takes all the sublimity out of Homer. Is such poetry as this, " making up for the lost time with this age," which Bacon deplores, and which he "would be glad, as God shall give him 1* ' ve, to recover it with posterity." } — Could Bacon, with all his vanity and love of fame, write such an Epilogue after his poetry as Horace did after completing a considerable collection of lyrical pieces ? u^ " Exegi monumentum cere perennis - .«< Regalique situ pyramidum altius ;" &c. > thus translated by Lord Lytton : — " I have built a monument than bronze more lasting, Soaring more high than regal pyramids, i Which nor the stealthy gnawing of the rain drop J " BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 75 Nor the vain rush of Boreas shall destroy ; Nor shall it pass away with the unnumbered Series of ages and the flight of time. I shall not wholly die." How different is the master-hand of Shaks- pere when he alludes to some Scriptural text, or rather, reproduces some leading truths of Scripture; he does not paraphrase after Bacon's fashion, neither does he metaphrase. Whether the religious sentiments scattered throughout his plays are his own personal sentiments, or merely such as he, in his dramatic art would cause his personages to utter, is foreign to my present inquiry. Suffice it to say his parallels with the Scriptures are not mere Truisms, Pla- tonisms, Etiphonisms. — There is little of the letter in them, but there is great abundance of the spirit ; a few instances will be enough : * * The allusions to Scripture in the Essays of Bacon are many ; they were necessary in some instances to support and confirm his own profound conclusions, but in the works of Bacon the expressions of religious sentiment do not seem to belong so much to the au- thor as they do, in Shakspere, who sometimes " delays if I 76 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. My lovers and my friends stand aloof from my sore ; and my kinsmen stand afar off Psalm XXXVIII. 2. Those you make your friends, And give your hearts to, when they once perceive the action of the drama to give a more full and em- phatic expression to a religious idea." In connection with this, we may call attention to a circumstance mentioned in William Aldis Wright's Preface to The Advancement of Learning : — "In February, 1 591-2 (Bacon then being 31 years of age) his brother Anthony came to live in Gray's Inn, and from the motherly solicitude of Lady Bacon for her eldest son's religious welfare, we learn that Francis was negligent in the use of family prayers, and was not to be held up as a pattern to his brother, or resorted to for counsel in such matters^ Shakspere, in his 32nd year, had written The Merchant of Venice, of which Schlegel, in his Lectures on Dramatic Literature, says "it is one of Shakspere's most perfect works." In it is that beautiful apostro- phe of Portia's on the quality of Mercy, unparallel- led by any author ancient or modern. Bacon's Essays, written when the author was 45 years old, treat of Great Place, of Boldness, of Good- ness, and Goodness of Nature, of Nobility, of Athe- ism, of Superstition, of Travel, of Empire, of Coun- sel, &c., but not of Mercy. *5m BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 77 The least rub in your fortunes, fall away Like water from ye, never found again But where they mean to sink ye. Henry VIII. Act ii. Sc. i. If thou, Lord shouldst mark iniquities, O Lord who shall stand ? Psalm CXXX. 3 Use every man according to his desert, and who shall 'scape a whipping ? Hamlet Act II. 2 My flesh and my heart faileth : but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever. Psalm LXXIII. 26 Now God be praised : that to believing souls Gives light to darkness, comfort in despair. 2 King Henry VI. Act II. i They bless with their mouth, but they curse inwardly. Psalm LXII 4 Some that smile, have in their hearts, I fear Millions of mischief. Julius Caesar Act IV. i My tables — meet it is, I set it down That one may smile and smile, and be a villain. Hamlet Act I. 5 Say not thou, I will recompense evil ; but wait on the Lord, and He shall save thee. Proverbs XX. 22 God will be avengbd for the deed ; Take not the quarrel from His powerful arm, He needs no indirect nor lawless course To cut off those who have ofifended Him. Richard III. Act I. 4 ill 78 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 'mM Put we our quarrel to the will of Heaven, Who, when He sees the hours ripe on earth. Will rain hot vengeance on offenders' heads. Richard .11. Act I. 2 If I regaru iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear rne. Psalm LXVI. 18 The Gods are deaf to hot and peevish vows : They are polluted springs, more abhorr'd Than spotted livers in the sacrifice. Troilus & Cressida Act V. 3 Words without thoughts never to Heaven go. Hamlet Act III. 3 Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that is 'flCCi^l ^•iefe turr. not away. St. Matthew V. 42 / To build his fortune, I will strain a little For 'tis bond in men. Timon of Athens Act I. i We are born to do benefits. Timon of Athens Act I. 2 What is yours to bestow, is not yours to reserve. Twelfth Night Act I. 5 He accepteth not the persons of Princes, nor regardeth the rich more than the poor, for they are all the work of his hands. Job XXXIV. 19 The King is but a man as I am ; the violet smells to him as it doth to me ; the element shews to him as it doth to me ; all his senses ha/e but human conditions \ his ceremonies laid by, in his nakedness he appears but a man. Henry V. Act IV. i BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 79 The self same sun that shines upon his court Hides not his visage from our cottage, but Looks on all alike. ' Winter's Tale Act IV. 3. Who provideth for the Raven his food ? Job XXXVIII. 41 He that doth the ravens feed Yea, providently caters for the sparrow Be comfort to my age. As You Like It Act II. 3 The night cometh when no man can work St. John XI. 4 Let's take the instant by the forward top ; For we are old, and our quick'st decrees The inaudible and noiseless foot of time Steals ere we can effect them. Alls Well that Ends Well Act V. 5 The old Serpent called the Devil and Satan, which de- ceiveth the whole world. Rev. XII. 9 Devils soonest tempt resembling spirits of light. Loves Labor Lost Act IV. i Often times to win us to our harm The instruments of darkness tell us truths and Win us to honest trifles, to betray us In deepest consequence. Macbeth Act I. 3 When devils will their blackest sins put on, They to suggest at first with heavenly shows. Timon of Athens Act II. x ■ t pi; H jm|f. I, .' ■ s 80 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. How exquisitely Shakspere has wrought Job's " morning stars singing together" into the following unmatched lines, except in the in- spired writings of the old Testament, giving in them additional force and beauty to that an- cient mystery which taught that the heavenly bodies, in their revolutions, sing together in a concert so loud, various and sweet as to exceed all proportion to the human ear. Also, to the old idea, of some of the Philosophers, which supposed that besides the music of the spheres which no mortal ear ever heard, there was a harmony in the human soul. " Look how the floor of heaven Is thick mlaid with patines of bright gold ; There's not the smallest orb, which thou behold'st But in his motion like an angel sings Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubin : Such harmony is in immortal souls ; But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it." Merchant of Venice Act. V. i. Tl^ ^ poet who wrote this angelic rapture in the thirty fourth year of his age, could not, in BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 8i the " sixth age," have written such a meagre couplet as this : — " As a tale told, which sometimes men attend, And sometimes not, our life steals to an end." unless he was in his " second childishness". Any one conversant with the writings of Shakspere would hardly '^ay such " dogrel rime', as Bacon's paraphrase of the Psalms bore the impress of his " mighty line." If by descending from things sacred to things profane, Bacon's couplet may be p? -allelled in " As You Like It" Act III. Scene. 2 " Fror^ the east to western Ind, No jewel is like Rosalind, Her worth, being mounted on the wind. Through all the world bears Rosalind, All the pictures, fairest lin'd, Are but black to Rosalind. Let no face be kept in mind But the fair of Rosalind." of which, Touchstone says : — " I'll rhyme you so, eight years together, din- ners and suppers, and sleeping hours excepted : it is the right butter-woman's rank to market." ^i*l 82 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. Could Milton who speaks of '< thg celestial siren's harmony That sit upon the nine unfolded spheres, And sing to these that hold the vital shears And turn the adamantine spindle round On which the fate of gods and men is wound." write in his poetic infancy such a line as " The greater navies look like walking woods." ? Could Coleridge who tells of " that innumerable company Who in broad circle lovelier than the rainbow Girdle this round earth in a dizzy motion, With noise too vast and constant to be heard ; — Fitliest unheard ! " produce such lines as these in connection with the XCth psalm Or as a watch by night, that course doth keep, And goes, and comes, unawares to them that sleep. Wordsworth, who says : — "The Heavens, whose aspect makes our minds as still As they themselves appear to be, Innumerable voices fill With everlasting harmony ; The towering headlands, crowned with mist. Their feet among the billows, know That Ocean is a mighty harmonist ; BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 83 th Thy pinions, universal Air, Ever waving to and fro, Are delegates of harmony, and bear Strains that support the seasons in their round : " could he have produced in his declining years such lines as these in reference to the grass which in the morning flourisheth, and in the evening withereth ? — " At morning, fair it musters on the ground ; At ev'n, it is cut down, and laid along, And though it spared were, and favour found. The weather would perform the mower's wrong : Thus hast thou hang'd our life on brittle pins, To let us know it will not bear our sins." Emphatically, I ask : — could Bacon, judging from all his absolutely known poetry, which is only this paraphrastic version of seven of the Psalms of David, by any possibility, have written f uch a striking parallel to this text in Christ's sermon on the Mount, "Judge not that ye be not judged ; for with what judgment ye judge ye shall be judged ; and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again ; " as we find in the following passage from " Measure for Measure ? " words that might arrest an un- 84 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. kind speech on the very lips, sending it back " as deep as to the lungs: " — " How would you be, If HE which is the top of judgment, should But judge you as you are ? oh, think on that And Mercy then will breath within your lips. Like man new made." We do not find in Bacon's writings any parallel passages to this one on Mercy, — which Shakspere calls in another place " an attribute to God — Bacon has given us Essays on Simula- tion, Envy, Vainglory, Cunning, Revenge, and Anger, but not on Mercy and Charity * True, he has given us an Essay on Love, in which he has strongly urged the dethronement of the God of Love, but he has not said a word in it about that Love which is the fulfilling of the Law : he has left no Essays on " Faith, * In his ^^ De Dignitate et Augmentis Scientarunt" Bacon gives a few lines to Charity, the noblest Grace, and says ; — " If a man's mind be truly inflamed with charity, it doth work him suddenly into greater per- fectionthan all the doctrine of morality can do." m BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 85 And Virtue, Patience, Temperance, and Love, By name to come call'd Charity — the soul , Of all the rest." Open your " Merchant of Venice" at the first scene of the fourth act, and see how Portia shines forth, " all her divine self," see how her elevated sense of pure Religion makes her ap- peal to Shylock's mercy. What a matchless piece of eloquence it is, and what a practical sermon to those who are enjoined to " do justice and love mercy ;" it is a lesson which ought to last through all time. Here it is unabridged — not a line can be spared — not a line need be added. The sermons of your ablest Divines pale before its " effectual fire :" The quality of Mercy is not strain'd ; It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath : it is twice bless'd ; It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes : 'Tis mightiest in the mightiest : it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown : His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, The attribute to awe and majesty, Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings ; But Mercy is above this sceptred sway ; It is enthroned in the hearts of kings. h m liii 86 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. It is an attribute to GOD Himself ; And earthly power doth then show likest God's When Mercy seasons Justice. Therefore, Jew, Though Justice be thy plea, consider this, — That in the course of Justice, none of us Should see salvation : we do pray for Mercy ; And that same prayer doth teach us all to render The deeds of Mercy.* Is there any thing in Bacon's prose or poetry like the above } No ! As Nathaniel Holmes is so fond of par- allels, I may put to him this question : — Did Shakspere borrow his idea of Mercy being " an attribute to God " from his contemporary Cer- vantes.? who, like Shakspere, entered on an im- mortal eternity on the same day, April 23, 16 16. The following is one of those wise injunc- tions which Don Quixote delivers to Sancho Panza, when he was appointed Governor of the Island of Barataria. " For the delinquent that is under thy juris- " * He delighteth in Mercy:' Micah VII. 8 "To the Lord our God belong Mercies and for- givenesses, though we have rebelled against him." Daniel IX. 9 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 87 diction, consider that the miserable man is sub- ject to the temptations of our depraved nature, and as much as thou canst, without grievance to the contrary party, show thyself mild and gentle ; for although God's attributes are egttal, yet, 10 our sight His Mercy is more precious, more eminent than His jMsticer Shakspere in another place (Measure for Measure, Act II., sc. 2) thus alludes to Mercy : — No ceremony, that to great ones 'longs, Not the King's crown, nor the deputed sword. The Marshal's truncheon, nor the Judge's robe, Become them with one half so good a grace As Mercy does." Bacon has given us an Essay on Riches, of which he says : " I cannot call Riches better than the bag- gage of Virtue : the Roman word is better — impedimenta ; for as the baggage is to an army, so is riches to virtue — it cannot be spared nor left behind, but it hindereth the march ; yea, and the care of it sometimes loseth or disturbeth the Victory ; " but he has given us no parallel to I u ')i' :l as BACON versus SHAKSPERE. these passages, from Shakspere, on the love of money and avarice, the concomitants of Riches, How quickly Nature falls into revolt When gold becomes her object. 2. Henry IV. Act IV. 4. Avarice Grows with more pernicious root Than summer seeding lust. Macbeth Act IV. 3 There is thy gold ; worse poison to men's souls ; Doing more murders in this loathsome world Than these poor compounds that thou may'st not sell ; I sell thee poison, thou sold me none. * Gold ! yellow, glittering, precious gold, f will make black, white ; foul, fair ; Wrong, right ; base, noble ; old, young ; coward, valiant- Ha, you gods ! Why, this Will lug your priests and servants from your sides, % Pluck stout men's pillows from below their heads. || * Spoken to an apothecary. Romeo and Juliet. fTimon of Athens, Act IV. 3. X Aristophanes, in his Plutus makes the priests of Jupiter desert his service to live with Plutus. || This alludes to the ancient custom of drawing away the pillow from under the heads of men, in their last agonies, to hasten their death, and thus relieve their sufferings. BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 89 This yellow slave Will knit and break religions, bless the accurs'd ; Make the hr-ar leprosy ador'd ; place theives, And give them title, knee, and approbation, With senators on the bench : this is it That makes the wapper'd * widow wed again ; She, whom the spital-house and ulcerous sores Would cast the gorge at, this embalms and spices To th' April day again.'' It is not probable that Bacon could have written such sentiments as these upon Gold, and called it in another place in the " Timon of Athens: " — " Thou sweet king killer, and dear divorce, twixt natural son and sire ! thou bright defiler of Hymen's purest bed ! that speak'st with every tongue to every purpose ! " for, according to Archbishop Whately, the illustrious annota- tor of Bacon's Essays, " the philosopher appears but too plainly to have been worldly^ ambitious, covetous y base, selfish, and unscrupulous. He reached the highest pinnacle, indeed, to which * Wappered may mean debilitaterl, worn or weak- ened. Beaumont and Fletcher have " unwappered " in the sense of unworn. Wappered is a word in use in Glostershire and Warwickshire. IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-S) 1.0 I.I 1.25 '-IIIIM IIIIM It p£ 2.0 1.8 U III 1.6 i^ v:

' fV «x^ :\ \ ^9) V #1 -b^ 'L*. ^ ^>" ^ O^ k % % 23 WEST MAIN STREI T WEBSTER, NY. 14580 (716) 872-4503 ";e, To prick and sting lier. Hamlet Act I. 5 To my sick soul, as Sin's true nature is, Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss ; So full of artless jealousy is Chiilt, It spills itself in fearing to be spilt. Hamlet Act IV. 5 Conscience is a thousand swords. Richard HI. Act V. 2 ' • 96 DA CON vaxus SIIAKSPERE. ^m Oh, it i Dionstrous ! monstrous. Methoviv«"'sitas BIBLIOTHECA Ottaviensi*^ li lOO BACON versus SHAKSPERE. \i J cnce permit others to read those works which they have no mind to, or those which they think have no relish of salvation in them. The noble music of the Spenserian stanza in " Childc Harold's Pilgrimage','' and the lyrical beauty, both of thought and language, in the " Sensitive Plant',' and the nervous, bare, unadorned Eng- lish in the pure and powerful prose of the " Taller and Examiner," cease to be a benefit to our students ; and " things of beauty," which ought not only to be a " joy for ever," but a joy to everybody, are lost for ever to those who are prohibited from reading them. John Milton, though he was a Puritan,* as Charles Kingsley has pointed out, was no rigid hater of the beau- tiful because it was Heathenish and Popish, no poet, perhaps, shows wider and truer sympathy with every form of the really beautiful in art, nature, and history than Milton, but he was a reader of his Bible and Shakspere ; he had looked God's word and his own soul in the face # « Plays and Puritans'" — Miscellanies, 1859. BACON versus SHAh'SPERE. lOI and acted upon that which he had found. He felt to his heart's core, for he sang of it, the magnificence and worth of really high art. Of Gorgeous Tragedy Presenting Thebes' or Pelops' line, Or the Tale of Troy divine, Or v.hat, though rare, of later age, Ennobled hath thy buskin'd stage. Read your Shakspere, peruse and re-peruse him, at your firesides, in meditative silence apart from the company of theatrical represen- tation ; you will be astonished what a treasure his pages disclose of noble sentiment, of acute observation, of instructive reflections, of sage advice, of practical truth, and moral wisdom. Read the writings of Bacon for their true philos- ophy, read and compare these two great Eliza- bethan lights, and the more carefully and attentively you do so, the more firmly am I im- pressed with the belief that nothing but a mis- guided and infatuated judgment will bring you to any other conclusion relative to Shaks- pere's authorship than that formed and openly stated by Ben Jonson and Milton, whose testi- i 1 I02 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. mony alone ought to be conclusive against the ''Baconian Theory!' Read Bacon's paraphrastic version of the seven Psalms* dedicated to George Herbert, and you will not rank him in the scale of poets with Giles Fletcher and his brother Phineas. or with Robert Herrick and George Wither. You will confess that in his rhym- ing version he does not rise equal to the lyrics and hymns of Jeremy Taylor, who has been styled " our Shnkspere in theology," and who though not considered a poet in the strictest sense of the term, will be ever endeared in the memory of the Anglican Church by his vastly comprehensive learning and exalted piety. It may be said of Bacon, though not a poet, that he is the Prince of Philosophers and has written his glorious Essays in prose with the pen of a poet ; that is, supposing poetry does not mean mere rhyme, nor mere *The Psalms selected are I. XII. XC. CIV. CXXVI. CXXXVII. CXLIX. Bacon describes them as "the poor exercises of his sickness." ^P^'-^ T' BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 103 metre, nor mere wit; nor is like our modern jinglings, where sound is preferred to sense, pro- vided there be a lot of high-flown epithets and violent metaphors in inflated language. There is a prose, like that of the Bible, which rises into Poetry. Instance these exam- ples : — Who hath measured the waters In the hollow of his hand, And meted out heaven with the span, And comprehended the dust Of the earth in a measure. And weighed the mountains in scales And the hills in a balance ? Isaiah XL, 12 The Heavens shall vanish away like smoke ; The earth shall wax old like a garment ; They that dwell therein shall die in like manner Isaiah II. 6 The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night ; The Heavens shall pass away with a great noise ; The elements shall melt with a fervent heat ; The earth and the things therein shall be burnt ; And all these things shall be dissolved St. Peter III. 10 These prophecies of St. Peter and Isaiah, Shakspere must have had in his mind's eye, i ii :! \ ^ 1i IS'; .■ { i I 1 1 'I 104 BACON versus SHAKSPERE when he wrote those memorable lines, which are graven on the scroll beneath his effigies in Poet's Corner, Westminster Abbey: — The cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself. Yea all which it inherit, shall dissolve ; And like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. Had Bacon given us such a paraphrase as Reginald Heber's of the glittering throng of Jewish worshippers, as the mighty proces- sion, with their priests and musicians, moved, in stately measures, onward to the gorgeous- ly appointed temple, chanting this jubilant an- them of praise to Jehovah ! then praise may be awarded to him as a poet. Contrast Bacon's CIVth with Heber's CXXIInd. 1 was glad when they said to me Let us go into the House of JEHOVAH, My feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem ! Jerusalem is built a compact city, House join to house within it. Thither the Tribes go up, the Tribes of JEHOVAH, To the memorial feast for Israel, To praise the majesty of JEHOVAH. BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 105 There stand the thrones of Judgment The thrones which the King hath established. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem; They shall prosper that love thee. Peace be within thy walls, And tranquility within thy salaces : I will say, Peace be within thee ; Because of the Temple of our GOD, I will seek thy good. The spirit of the original is not in this instance sacrificed. Shakespere, also, never lost sight of the spirit of the original, he never sac- rificed the marrow for the dry bones. With this slight digression, I shall dismiss the Shaksperian parallels with Bible truths, in the hope that many may be induced to at- tentively read their Bibles, and their Shaks- peres, and their Miltons, and their Bacons, and their Cudworths, and their Barrows and their Hookers, and the works of other great men of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- turies, and quit their novels and their perio- dicals for a while. They will then not only learn the striking harmony that subsists be- tween the Bible and some of those great » m -^s '."•i w ? 1 06 BA CON versus SNA KSPERE. minds, — " gulfs of learning " — " monarchs of letters " ! They will also learn the better how to refute the audacious, if not blasphemous utterances of such men as Nathaniel Holmes, who say : — " We worship in Jesus what belongs to Plato ; in Shakspere, what belongs to Bacon ; and in many others, what belongs to the real philosopher, the actual teacher, the true Saviour, and to Philosophy herself." I shall leave to the Divines to show that there is nothing in Christ that belongs to Plato ; but I may remark, en passant, that St. Paul's descrip- tion of the spiritual condition of the heathen world in general, not merely of the ignorant, but also of the most learned and accomplished men of Greece and Rome, is generally allowed to be a faithful representation. The picture was drawn after the talents of such men as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero had been constantly exercised in endeavouring to en- lighten and improve mankind ; and it is very generally admitted that the utmost stretch of their researches terminated in mere opinion BACON versus SHAK'SPERE. 107 and conjecture ; and that their labours were not sufficient to preserve themselves from doubt and error, much less to recover others from idolatry and corruption. Philosophy never yet framed a Religion suited to the wants of man, but it may safely be said that in Shakspere's plays there is so much of wise counsel and elevated thought, which, if known and followed, would guide a young man safely through the most critical periods of his life. The dramatist has most ably seconded the warnings of Solomon, and the teachings of St. Paul, who commands that we keep our bodies sacred as temples dedi- cated to the living God. It has been beauti- fully and truly said by Charles W. Stearns, * " Shakspere instructs not with the icy precepts of the puritan or pharisee, who confesses no sympathy with the temper, and would repress the natural gaiety of youth ; nor, as the grey bearded ascetic and hermit, whose fires are * Shakspeare Treasury. Charles W. Stearns, M.D., 1869. • • i ^ Ji^ io8 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. long ago extinct. But having himself ' sounded all the depths and shoals ' that young men must pass over in the voyage of life, he teaches them as though he were one of their own companions." Herein there is a marked contrast between the teachings of Bacon. His Essays, golden meditations as they are, were not issued in a complete form until the year 1625, a year before his death, when they were enlarged both in number and weight. They have about them something of the gravity of age, and the coldness of the grey-bearded ascetic. Bacon approaches a subject always on its serious side. It has been said of him, that " his habit of mind is leisurely : he does not write from any special stress of passionate im- pulse ; he does not create material so much as he comments upon material already exist- ing. He is usually full of allusions and re- ferences, and there his reader must be able to follow and understand." In other words, he does not write as a Poet who, according to BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 109 Wordsworth, " is a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him ; delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in the goings on of the Universe, and habitually im- pelled to create where he does not find tkejur It cannot be said of Bacon, " He is doubtless at once the merriest and wisest of laughing philosophers ; while of Shakspere, in the larger part of his comic scenes, may be said, as is elegantly said by Xenophon of Socrates : — " He sports with a serious purpose," which Bacon never seems to do. Franklin Fisk Heard, in his preface to Baton's Essays,* says : " He lives among great ideas, as with great nobles, with whom he dare not be too familiar. In the tone of his mind there is ever something imperial. When he * Bacon's Essays with annotations by Richard Whately, D.D., and notes and glossarial index. Bos- ton, Lee & Shepherd, 1868. I lO BACON versus SHAKSPERE. writes on building, he speaks of a palace, with spacious entrances and courts and ban- queting halls ; when he writes on gardens, he speaks of alleys and mounts, waste places and fountains, of a garden which is indeed prince- like ; " * * * * his Essays is a book plainly to lie in the closets of Statesmen and Princes, and designed to nurture the noblest natures." Hence, in my opinion, not so much a book for the guidance of youth, or one that they would take much delight in reading. Shakspere may be said to moralize amidst his mirthment, and preach amidst his playful- ness ; but while instruction tinctures his gaiety, it pervades his seriousness. -; Bacon in his Essay " Of Gardens " and in his " Cogitationes de Natura Rerum " does not speak of a Bank where the wild thyme blows, There oxslips and the nodding violet grows ; Quite o'er-canopied with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine. Midsummer Night's Dream Act II. i PA cox vrrsits S/f.l KS/'j:h'/:. II I nor of Pale primroses, Tliat die unmarried, ere they can behold I5right l'ha'l)iis in his strength ; Winter's Tale Act IV. 4 nor of daffodils, • 'I'hat come before the swallow dares, and take Tlie winds of March with beauty ; Winter's Tale Act IV. 7, nor of mariiijolds. That f(o to bed with the sun And with him rises weepin<:[ ; Winter's Tale Act IV. 3 nor of violets, dim, Rut sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes Or Cytherea's breath ; Winter's Tale Act IV. 3 nor of Daisies-pied, and violets blue. And lady-smocks, all silver white, And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue, ]\'/iicli paint the meadows with delight ; Love's Labor Lost Act V. 2 nor of Crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples. That liberal she])herds give a grosser name. But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them ; Hamlet Act IV. 7 u ! if ppp 112 n A COA' versus SI/AKSPi:/;/:. nor of The flower, that's like thy face, pale primrose, nor The azur'd harebell, like thy veins ; no nor 'I'he leaf of e};Iantine, whom not to slander Out-sweeten'd not thy breath. C'ymbeline Art IV. 2 All these savour more of the meadows on the banks of the Avon, where all these flowers are so luxuriant, than the i^arclen of " Graies Inne " * and more of the youth who strolled over the fields to Shottery and went a wooing there one Anne Hathaway, and in the sinnmer's eve sat with her under "the willow that ijrows ascaunt the brook," and swore " he lov'd her well," than the philosophic lawyer who married " his wench at Maribone " when he was at the age of sentimental, not romantic, forty-five ; * Archbishop Whately says " l^acon was remarkably unskilful in the dejiartment of natural history. His observations wore slij^ht and inaccurate, and his rea- sonings from them very rash. And most remarkable of all is his error about the mistletoe ; a triflint;- matter in itself ; but the casting up of a sum is a test of one's arithmetic, whether the items be farthings or pounds." BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 113 or 2 )n rs _\s ,^d K ■ s d e y is l- e ()" !-> it and when " the hey-day in the blood was tame, and humble, and waited upon the judgment." Let me now try to dispose of some of the stumbling blocks in the way of these " Baconian Theorists." The slight knowledge we possess of Shakspere's early life, school days, and educa- tion, his obscure and humble parentage, his profession as an actor, and the saying of Ben Jonson — ''And thoiigh thoit hadst small Latine, and lessc Grceke," the " Theorists " seize with avidity, and say because Shakspere drew mate- rials, ideas, and expressions, from the plays of Sophocles, Aristophanes and Euripides, and even from Plato, no less than from the Latin of Ovid, Virgil, Horace, Seneca, and Tacitus, he could not have written the plays ascribed to him. They ignore these lines in Jonson's eulogy : — " He was not for an age, but for all time And all the Muses still were in their prime When like Apollo he came forth to warne Our eares, or like a Mercury to charme ! " They are unwilling to believe that the plays of Shakspere have replaced those of the Latines and the Greekes! Ben Jonson, of Wf 114 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. II il , course, was only paying to Shakspcre's mem- ory the usual lyins; compliments put on grave stones and monuments, he was merely imitat- ing Bacon's simulation in the nauseous adula- tion of his dedication of the First Book of " The Advancement of Learning " to King James. " For it seemeth much in a King, if, by the compendious extractions of other men's wits and labours, he can take hold of any superficial ornaments and shows of learning; or if he countenance and prefer learning and learned men ; but to drink indeed of the true fountains of learning, nay, to have such a foun- tain of learniui^ in himself, in a King, dnd in a King born, is almost a miracle. And the more, because there is met in your Majesty a rare conjunction, as well of divine and sacred literature, as of profane and human ; so as your Majesty standeth invested of that triplicity, zuhich in great veneration was ascribed to ancient Hermes; the poiver and fortune of a King, the hiow ledge and illumijtati on of a priest, and the learning and universality of a philosopher.^' BA CON versus SUA KSPfiRE. 1 1 5 The Theorists " arc truly duiiib-fuunclccl at Shakspere's characters speaking the language of Nature ; at his always putting into the mouths of his dramatis personam, be they high or low, Kings, Princes, and Nobles, or Constables. Clowns, and Grave diggers, precisely what they must have said. They say to themselves, " Can such things be and overtake us like a summer's cloud without our special wonder," that this son of an ordinary ycovian, includ- ing the business of a glover, this " poacher," this " link boy," this " mere servitor or under- actor," this " puppet," this " ape," at the Globe and Blackfriars theatres, could rise to the rank of the writer of the best plays in the English language, rivalling those of Seneca and Plau- tus! * How can we, they say, believe it possible * Pope says : — " Honour and shame from no condition rise," To wit : — Beranger, a printer's compositor, taught himself, and began to publish at 16. Ikn Jonson, a bricklayer's lad, fairly worked his way ii6 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. that he has written these plays, &c., when there is no original manuscript of any play, or poem, letter, or other prose composition in the handwriting of William Shakspere as yet discovered ! E/ tu quoque — Have the " Theo- rists " produced any manuscripts of any poetry, sonnets, masques and plays of Francis Bacon ? No — of course, there is no necessity! the upward through Westminster and Cambridge, and be- came famous by his " Every Man in his Humour," at 24. Burns, a ploughboy, was a village celebrity at 16, and soon after began to write. To show that a Poet's talents are frequently dis- played early in youth, instance the following : — Ovid wrote verses from boyhood. Pope published his pastorals at 16, and translated the "Iliad" between 25 and 30. Schiller became famous through his " Brigands " at 23. Byron wrote his " English Bards and Scotch Re- viewers" at 21. Coleridge was filled with poetry and metaphysics at 15. Dibdin, the naval ballad writer, his first opera was acted at Covent Garden when he was 16. Dryden wrote good verses at 17. BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 117 2n in ^et eo- ry, n? :he be- 24. 16, dis- .ted ds" Re- sics was philosopher, not wishing to be known as the author, ordered them to be destroyed! very like ! very Hke ! * — Why may not Heminge and Condell, after the publication of the 1623 Folio, considered the Shaksperian Manuscripts of no value, and destroyed them ; or if they had retained the properties and archives of the Blackfriars theatre, may they not have been made way with either by the fanatical puritans in the reigns of King James I. and Charles I. * Bacon, had he veritably been the author, he would not have so acted ; the idea is irrational and absurd. He must have been a fool not to have known that such plays would have immortalized him. He knew the repute with which they were l^cld in by Queen Elizabeth and King James and the nobles of both reigns. And even admitting for the sake of argument that he did not wish to be known as the author during his life, would not his tatling, fidgety friend, Tobie Matthew, have divulged the authorship ? Would Selden and Herbert, who were to be consulted by Brother Constable relative to all Bacon's manu- script compositions, and the fragments of such as were not finished, if they had found any writings similar to Shakspere's, withheld or destroyed them } m ii8 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. and of the Commonwealth, * or consumed by the great fire of London, 3rd Sept., 1666 ? It is all surmise and conjecture about these manuscripts so far as Bacon is concerned ; and I must confess after the most careful and im- partial reading of Nathaniel Holmes's work, " The Authorship of Shakspere," that I never read a more specious one, nor one more full of crotchets and hobbies, nor one so entirely dependent on a reasoning without facts, and on that oily monosyllable IF. Like Gratiano's, in the Merchant of Venice, " his reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff ; you shall seek all day ere you find them : and when you have them they are not worth the search," — that is, in con- firmation of the " Baconian Theory." Nevertheless " The Authorship of Shaks- pere " has its uses for the student in the * In that age, poetry and novels were publicly destroyed by the Bishops, and privately by the Puri- tans. In the Commonwealth the stage was totally abolished. BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 119 carefully prepared list of parallelisms between the Prince of Poets and the Prince of Phi- losophers, " who made the Elizabethan age a more glorious and important era in the history of the human mind than the age of Pericles, of Augustus, of Leo." These parallelisms, though not amounting in themselves to anything more than mere conjectural evidence in favour of the " Baconian Theory ", are very interesting and instructive, and show that there are, as the Apostle says in his Epistle to the Corinthians, " so many kinds of voices in the world, and none of them is without signification" — many voices which seem to breathe a similar spirit, there- fore parallels are not without signification* * Unfortunately for the " Theorists " these paral- lels are " double-edged " — many of them were writ- ten years after the sonnets and plays, and some after Shakspere's death. So that it may be asked : — Did Bacon borrow from Shakspere ? Often times the parallels are nothing more than the accidental use of the very verbs, nouns, and adjec- tives in common use by most of the writers of the period. - % 120 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. m '•\\\ Take the English Christian classic writers of the sixteenth and seventeeth centuries, and you will find many parallels between them and the Heathen classic writers. Expressions and sen- timents found in Socrates, Plato, Xenophon, Aristotle, Seneca, Juvenal, Quintillian, Hesiod, Persius, Horace and other Greek and Latin au- thors find an echo in Shakspere, Bacon, Cecil, Selden, Fuller, Cotton, Milton, Taylor, Hooker, Walton, Donne, Barrow, South, Flavel, Burton, and Leighton, thereby proving a fragment of Heraclitus, " all human understandings are nourished by one Divine . Word^ But to return to Jonson's saying of *' small Latine and lesse Greeke\' it implies that Shakspere had a knowledge of both, and it is more than likely that he received a sound ed- ucation at the Grammar School at Stratford, at least education enough to read ordinary Latin Books and Translations. His father, having reached the highest distinction which it was in the power of his fellow townsmen to bestow, that of High Bailiff or Chief Magistrate, would BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 121 have the privilege of sending his son William to the Grammar School connected with the Corporation of Stratford ; and for the sake of argument, I have a right to assume from the internal evidence of Shakspere's writings, that he received a solid education, though he may not have received an academical and classical education, such as was obtainable in the six- teenth century at "those twins of learning Ipswich and Oxford," nor have been so ripe and good a Scholar as their princely founder Cardinal Wolsey. At all events he was stored with good vigor- ous and idiomatic English. From his writings there was unquestionably one Book with which he was familiar, the Great Bible of Tyndale's, revised by Coverdale, which doubtless his mother, the gentle Mary Arden, often read to him. He would thus, as a boy, get impress- ed with the story of Joseph sold into slavery and advanced to honour; and how the Lord was with the child Samuel ; and that God sent his angel to shut the Lion's mouths that they should Ml 111 1 f 1 122 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. not hurt his servant Daniel ; and also sent his angel to preserve the three children in the fiery furnace. He would learn how Elijah was fed at the brook Cherith by ravens ; and of that Herod who murdered the Innocents ; and of Christ blessing little children, and teaching the people that the poor in spirit, the meek, the just, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peace makers were the happy and beloved of God. One thing may be fairly assumed, that Shakspere had wise and good masters at Strat- ford's Grammar school of the Holy Guild. " These Grammar Schools,"* as Charles Knight observes, " were wise institutions, they opened the road to usefulness and honour to the humblest in the land ; they bestowed upon the son of the peasant the same advantages as the son of the noble could receive from the most accomplished teacher is his father's halls." In other words, Shakspere, the son of the yeoman. * Philip Sidney and Fulke Greville were form- fellows at the Free Grammar School of Shrewsbury. BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 123 had as a good a chance to be educated as Henry Wriothesly the accomplished Earl of Southampton. Who shall say he did not pro- fitably use his advantage ? Whatever his edu- cation was, he evidently had read much, and was very well accomplished in the most useful parts of human learning. Hugh Miller has upon this subject a few sensible and pertinent remarks* — " There has been much written on the learn- ing of Shakspere, but not much to the purpose : one of our old Scotch proverbs is, worth all the dissertations on the subject I have yet seen, " Gods Bairns are eath to learl' i. e. easily instructed. Shakspere must, I suppose, have read many more books than Homer (we may be sure every good book that came in his way, and some bad ones), and yet Homer is held to have known a thing or two. The more ancient poet was unquestionably as ignorant of English % 'J •:||'l ' \% * First Impressions of England and its People, p. 259. London Edition, 1874. 124 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. II ■v\ as the more modern one of Greek ; and as one produced the Iliad without any acquaintance with Hamlet, I do not see why the other may not have produced Hamlet without any acquain- tance with the Iliad. Johnson was quite in the right in holding, that though the writings of Shakspere exhibit much knowledge, it is often such knowledge as books did not supply. He might have added further, that the knowledge they display, which books did supply, is of a kind which might be all found in English books at the time, — fully one half of it, indeed, in the Romances of the period. Every great writer, in the department in which he achieves his greatness, whether he be a learned Milton, or an unlearned Burns, is self taught." Rapin, in his reflections, speaking of the necessary qualities belonging to a poet, tells us : — " He must have a genius extraordinary ; great natural gifts ; a wit, just, fruitful, piercing, solid and universal ; an understanding clear and distinct ; an imagination neat and pleas- ant ; an elevation of soul that depends not only I ! 1,1 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. "5 on art or study, but is purely the gift of Heaven, which must be sustained by a lively sense and vivacity; judgment to consider wisely of things, and vivacity for the beautiful expression of them." All of which, " I must powerfully and potently believe" Shakspere possessed, as I do that " old men have grey beards and their faces are wrin- kled ;" that is, if he is the author of the plays, poems and sonnets. From Milton's classical education, it is not all at to be wondered that there should be found in his writings so many imitations of Homer, Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, and you can see from whence they are derived. Had not Shakspere enough Latin to abstract all he required from Virgil, Horace, and Ovid? Had he not also for ready use translations of Terence, Seneca, Livy, and Tacitus ; and of Homer, Herodotus, Plutarch, Epictetus, Hippocrates and Galen ? Shakspere presents numerous instances of undesigned resemblance to the Ancients ; pass- ages purely original in him, may be parallelled with corresponding passages of writers with 126 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. I I II whom he may have had but a slight acquaint- ance. Nathaniel Holmes, not having proved by external evidence that Bacon is the author of Shakspere s plays, at least not to my mind, I maintain my perfect right to prove by internal evidence that Shakspere was a tolerably good* classical scholar ; that he had practical wisdom together with a wonderfully varied knowledge of the different arts and pursuits of life ; of military science, witness his King John, Richard II. and III. Henry IV. V. and VI. with their war pic- tures ; — this military knowledge he could not have obtained from Bacon — of horticultural and rural life ; — these he might have got from his native county Warwick — of the sea and what- ever belongs to nautical matters ; of wood- craft, field sports, falconry and hunting ; — these were not the forte of the Reader of Gray's Inn, and the Attorney General to King James ; { though it is true that in the eighth decade of '. the nineteenth century we find a Reverend and : grey-bearded octogenarian in the Diocese of Lincoln, a breeder of race horses. r BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 127 Nathaniel Holmes does not give any par- allels from Bacon s writings upon the soldier's and sailor's life, or upon field sports. Milton, according to his able and learned biographer and editor, (Thomas Newton D.D.) was, at the age of seventeen, a very good clas- sical scholar, and master of several languages, and he was fitted for the University of Cam- bridge at St. Paul's Grammar School ; with these facts, judging from the phrenological development of Shakspere's massy brain cover or " globe-like cranium," when compared with that of Milton's, there would be no difificulty in the author of " Venus and Adonis " acquir- ing a tolerable proficiency in the Latin tongue before he left the Grammar School of the Holy Guild at Stratford-on-Avon, or at least enough to be able to read and understand his Ovid, Virgil, and Horace. If he did not, did he get his friend Ben Jonson to point out to him Horace, when Hamlet utters this somewhat obscurely evolved observation which precedes the entrance of the Ghost ? ■iwli I n >i • 128 If /I CON versus SHAKSPERE. So, oft it chances in particular men, That for some vicious mole of Nature in them, As, in their birth, — wherein they are not guilty Since Nature cannot choose his origin — &:c. Hamlet Act I. 4 . This nice and true observation, founded on the quick-sightedness of our Nature to the faults of others, occurs more than once in the manner's painting Horace Discit enim citius, meminitque libentius illud Quod quis deridet, quam quod probat et veneratus. Lib : II. Epist. I. Vitiis mediocribus, ac mea paucis, Mendosa est natura, alioqui recta ; velut si Egregio inspersos reprendas corpore noevos. Lib : I. Sat. 6 But soft ! methinks I scent the morning air ; The glowworm shews the matin to be near, And 'gins to pale his uneffectual fire. Hamlet Act I. 5 This remarkably resembles what Virgil makes the ghost of Anchises say to his son /Eneas : — Jamque vale ! torquet medios nox humida cursus, Ut me scevus equis Oriens adfiavit anhelis. iEn. Book V. BACON versus SHAKSPKRE. 129 Like the ghost of Anchises, this of Ham- let's father, speaks of his abode : — Non me impia namque Tartara habent, tristesque umbrce. In Coriolanus, Act IV., Sc. i., I shall be lov'd, when I am lack'd, exactly agrees with the ^foratian Remark : — Urit qui fulgore, ex^'^fus afnabiiitr idem. This idea is thus beautifully unfolded by Cowper : — Not to understand a treasure's worth, Till time hath stolen away the slighted good, Is cause of half our poverty. It is a favourite sentiment with Shakspere : — thus, in Antory and Cleopatra, Act I. Sc. 4 : It hath been taught us from the primal state. That he, which is, was wish'd, until he were ; That the ebb'd man, ne'er lov'd till ne'er worth love. Comes dear'd by being lack'd. In the Tempest the following fine apostro- phe has been supposed an imitation of Medea's 5 Msaxr. '■ \ mSm ■'i Wm :■! f i..,ii.i J ■<' ni I :f 130 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. speech in Ovid's Metam, Lib. VII., which was translated before the play was written * Aurteque, et venti, montesque, amnesque, lacusque, Dique omnes memorum, &c. The resemblance is remarkable ; but Shaks- pere has left Ovid far behind, in richness of imagery and energy of diction. There is an unusual and admirable stateliness and solemn- ity in the flow and tone of these noble lines, which are some of our poet's latest productions, showing, as Bacon says : — " True art is always capable of advancing^ Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves ; And ye that on the sands with printless foot Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him When he comes back ; you demi-puppets, that By moonshine do the green-sour ringlets make, Whereof the ewe not bites ; and you whose pastime Is to ntake midnight mushrooms ; that rejoice To hear the solemn curfew ; by whose aid (Weak masters though ye be) I have bedimm'd The noon-tide Sun, called forth the mutinous winds, And 'twixt the green sea and the azur'd vault Set roaring war : to the dread rattling thunder See Gelding's Ovid, translated in 1567. BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 131 Have I given fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak With his own bolt : the strong-bas'd promontory Have I made shake, and by the spu.s pluck'd up The pine and cedar : graves, at my command, Have wak'd their sleepers ; op'd and let them forth By my most potent art." Tempest Act V. i There is no parallel to this in Bacon ! and I ask the classic scholar to produce one among all the English translations of Ovid ? Shakspere may have read his Ovid for another purpose, especially the De Tristibus in which the Latin Poet endeavours to make amends for his licentious poems, and gives Augustus a sort of plan for a public reforma- tion. Amongst other things he advises sup- pressing of plays " as being the promoters and dissolution of manners." " Ut tamen hoc fatear, ludi quoque semina proebent Nequitiae : tolli tota theatra jube." Take the plays of some of Shakspere's contemporaries, which Ben Jonson thus de- scribes in his own noble prose, " wherein noth- ing but the filth of the mire is uttered and i: 1 V [ j m ;i Hi i m •■I pr" I 11 Vif Wi 132 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. that with such impropriety of phrase, such plenty of solecisms, such dearth of sense, so bold prolepses, such racked metaphors, with (indecency) able to violate the ear of a Pagan, and blasphemy to turn the blood of a Chris- tian to water," and behold how Shakspere reformed the Drama, showing in his own plays Vice her own deformity, holding her up to detes- tation and interesting the heart in the cause of Virtue and Humanity. " There is in Shakspere's plays," says a Reverend critic,* " a certain manly, healthy, and fearless hardihood, as opposed to an effemi- nate, sickly, nervous sensitiveness of moral feeling, which is far better suited than the latter to the rude atmosphere of ' this work- ing-day world,' and quite as nearly allied to sincerity and virtue. The very openness and coarseness of some of Shakspere's coarse passages brings its own antidote: it is vice * Remarks on the Moral Influence of Shakspere's Plays, by Thos. Grinfield, M.A., Longmans 1850. BACON versus SHAKSPERE. ^Zl .ft without disguise; there is nothing insidious ; nothing meretricious; no serpent under the rose ; no poison dipt in honey ; as in the - smooth amatory minstrels and novelists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries." Or, to use the language of Coleridge one of our poet's purest and best of critics : — " Shaks- ■ pere has no interesting incests, no virtuous vice ; he never renders that amiable which Religion and Reason alike teach us to detest." Gervinus says: — " The relation of Shakspere's poetry to morality and to moral influence upon man is most perfect ; in this respect, from Aris- totle to Schiller, nothing higher has been asked of poetry than that which Shakspere rendered. If Bacon felt the lack of a science of human passions, he rightly thought that historians and V poets supplied this science, and he might well have searched for this science before all in his neighbour Shakspere ; for no other poetry has taught as his has done, by reminders and warn- ings, that the taming of the passions is the aim of civilization." 134 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. m Had Bacon's Essays been published during Shakspere's time, and had our Poet read them, he may have, possibly, acted upon the great philosopher's advice, who thus writes : — " As for jests there are certain things, which ought to be privileged from them, {i. e. plays and such like) namely, Religion, matters of state, great persons, any man's present business of import- ance ; and any case that deserveth pity." Nevertheless, though Bacon's Essays and works were not published, is it not possible, nay even probable, that there may have been an intimacy or interchange of thought between Shakspere and Bacon, though not to such an extent as that existing between Bacon and Jonson ? For, if Bacon really took the great interest in the drama, masques, and such like, as is represented, I cannot see how he could avoid the knowledge of such a man as Shaks- pere, the master spirit of Tragedy and Comedy; neither how Shakspere should not have made the acquaintance of Bacon if aware of his fondness for such productions, and his intimacy BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 135 with so many literate associates in common, including Selden, Cotton, Camden, Carew, Raleigh, and some " divers of worship " who met at the Mermaid, not for wet combats as some of the " Baconian Theorists " have basely insinuated, but to enjoy the feast of reason and the flow of soul, though it did not belong to the philosopher's gravity and wisdom to resort to such a place. Of this club, or Parliament of Genius, which combined more talent than ever met together before or since, Ben Jonson was a member ; and here for many years he regularly repaired with Shakspere, Beaumont, Fletcher, Selden, Cotton, Carew, Martin, Donne, and many others, whose names even at this distant period, call up a mingled feeling of reverence and respect. Jon- son tells us himself in his graceful poem " Invi- ting a Friend to Supper: " — But that which most doth take my muse and me, Is a pure cup of rich Canary wine, Which is the Mermaid's now, but shall be mine. Pi- 1 But the Canary was to be used, not abused: — II I 136 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. Of this we shall sup free, but moderately ; Nor shall our cups make any guilty men : But at our parting we will be as when We innocently met. No simple word, That shall be utter'd at our mirthful board. Shall make us sad next morning, or affright The liberty that we'll enjoy to night. This is not the principle of intemperance at any rate, nor did the associates of Jonson meet at the " Mermaid " for mere sensual grati- fication. Raleigh's club-meetings were not the feasts of the senses alone ; the members were Eruditi, Urbani^ Hilares, Hones ti , there, were elegance without extravagance, wit without malice, high converse without meddling with sacred things, argumentation without violence, and conviviality without drunkenness. Intemperance in strong drinks is condemned by Shakspere when he makes Michael Cassio say: — O that men should put an enemy into their mouths to steal away their brains ! that we should with joy, revel, pleasure, and applause, transform ourselves to beasts. Caesar says : — It's monstrous labour when I wash my brain. And it grows fouler. ;i -^u BACON versus SNA /^SPE/^E. ' 137 Macduff says: — Boundless intemperance In nature is a tyranny ; it hath been Th' untimely emptying of the unhappy throne, And fall of many kings. Hamlet, speaking of excessive drinking, says : — It is a custom More honour'd in the breach than the observance. And indeed, it takes From our achievements, though perform'd at height. The pith and marrow of our attribute. Gower, the author of " Confessio Amantis," a piece upon which his character and reputa- tion are almost entirely founded, is said to have made up what he wanted in invention, from his common-place book, like our modern " enquire-within books; "which was stored with an inexhaustible fund of instructing maxims, axioms, pleasant narrations and philosophical deductions; also that he very probably cd- ducted his associate Chaucer into those pro- found mysteries which had been just opened by Roger Bacon. It can be proved that 138 BACON versus SHAKSPEER. Gower derived much information <^rom the Sccretum Secretorum, a sort of abridgement of the Aristotleian philosophy, filled with many Arabian innovations and absurdities and en- riched with an appendix concerning phlebot- omy, justice, public notaries, tournaments, and physiognomy, rather than from the Latin translations of Aristotle. May not Ben Jon- son have conducted his associate Shakspere into some of the profound philosophical mys- teries which he had translated for Bacon ? Moreover, may not Shakspere have kept a common-place book, or derived information from this said Secretum Secretorum^ and also from " certaine workes of Galen, Englyshed by Thomas Gale, 1586? and from the Ethiques of Aristotle, &c., Ihon Wylkinson ; printed by Grafton, Printer to King Edward VI., 1547.'*" Further, may not Shakspere have picked up much of his knowledge of legal terms from his associate Selden, who was elected in May, 1604, a member of the Society of the Inner Temple, and in 1606 had drawn up an his- -Til BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 139 torical treatise on the Civil Government of England before the coming in of the Nor- mans? If Selden was in the habit of min- gling with the wits that frequented the " Mer- maid," his associates may have participated some- what of his nature, for he was not given to trifling pursuits, nor vicious pleasures, he, very likely, only formed one of them to hear and enjoy Words that have been So nimble, and so full of subtle flame, As if that every one from whom they came Had met to put his whole wit into a jest. From the many-sided genius Raleigh, who has been well styled " the soldier, statesman, scholar, and sea adventurer," who had his heart full of most chivalrous worship for England's tutelary genius, may not Shakspere have ob- tained some of the military knowledge of Tactics, Discipline, Strategy, and Generalship, Soldier's life, &c., evinced so strongly in many of his plays; to wit: — King John, Richard II. and III. Henry IV. V. and VI., Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, and Antony & Cleopatra } !; 140 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. Harry the Vth, Hotspur, Falconbridge and Talbot are real soldiers, not " great arithme- ticians, fellows that had never set a squadron in the field;" they had something more in them than " bookish theorie." It may be argued — all this is mere hypoth- esis — granted — the " Baconian Theory " hinges upon an IF! The " retort courteous " may ask if these worthies, Raleigh, Selden, Jonson, Shakspere, and other literary friends were in the habit of meeting at the " Mermaid," (and this will scarcely be open to question), then is it to be supposed that every meeting was a mere Symposium, or a keen encounter of the wits similar to that between Mercutio and Romeo in the fourth scene of the second act of Romeo and Juliet? Some of these meetings were devoted to social and intellectual converse ; for the men in those days were sociable ani- mals, and were, perhaps, very little different to the members of different clubs, which Addison, in the Spectator, Chap. IX. has so admirably described, where a set of men finding them- f! BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 141 - > selves agree in any particular, though ever so trivial, establish themselves in a kind of fratern- ity. What was done in the days of Burke, Gar- rick, Reynolds, Johnson, Goldsmith, Walpole, and Macklin, when scholars, statesmen, authors, and actors, met to enjoy the flow of soul and talk on the " Sublime and Beautiful," was probably done at the " Mermaid," by Raleigh, Selden, Cotton, Donne, Shakspere, Beaumont, Fletcher, and rare Ben Jonson. Each possessed an undisputed claim on the attention and sympathy of the other; a claim founded on the sentiment that awakened a burst of applause in a Roman Theatre " Homo sum ; Humani nihil a m.e alienum puto ;'' — "Human myself, nothing human can fail to interest me." I have already devoted too much time and space in rebuttal of the insane " Baconian Theory," much more, perhaps, than the subject warrants. The few readers who read the writ- ings of Shakspere and of his contemporaries slowly, observantly, and reflectively, and, as T* 142 BACON versus SHAK'SPEJiE. r 1 I .1 ' Bacon would say, chewingly, will need no argument to convince them that Shakspere, hin" is the author of the plays by common consent ascribed to him. But as there are so many throughout the world who are glad to taki'. their opinions at second hand from their neighbours, and save themselves the trouble of examination and reflection, and are ready to place implicit reliance on the ipse dixit of any one who will write a book, I have assayed to sling a stone at Nathaniel Holmes for his wic' ' and wanton attempt to disturb our fait., ud destroy an innocent belief so full »f pleasure. For wicked it is to assail the righ. eous memory of the dead, and wanton it is to argue away, upon purely conjectural premises, the literary character of another. If no more evidence either external or internal can be brought by the " Baconians " to disprove Shakspere's authorship, my faith remains stead- fast. If I have failed to convince my readers so far, that Shakspere the actor is Shakspere the Poet, let me try to induce them to examine BACON versus SHAKSPERE. M3 the question for themselves by the light of contemporaneous authors and history; by the characters of the two men ; by analogy. Your great philosophers, metaphysicians, and essay- ists, whose works are the result of just, pure, and strict enquiry and experiment have not been Poets and Dramatists since the commencement of letters. Bacon being Shakspere is incon- sistent with all precedent and all subsequent literary combinations. With the object of helping the reader to form a conclusion, 1 have put in parallel columns a list of authors and their works, and a list of Poets and Dra- matists, in a sort of chronological order, to show at a glance that the Poet's mind is of a different stamp or kind to that of the Philos- opher. ANCIENT. ill THALES, The father of Greek Philosophy, Socrates and Plato. Archimides and Aristotle. Pliny and Cicero. HOMER, The father of Poets. yEschylus and Sophocles. Pindarus and Anacreon. Horace and Catullus. 144 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. MODERN. I I Roger Bacon, Experimental Philosopher. Richd. Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity. Bacon (Lord Verulam), Novum Organum. Sir Kenelm Digby, Metaphysician. Ralph Cudworth, Intellectual System, Thomas Hobbes, The Leviathan. John Locke, The Understanding. Sir Isaac Newton, Principles of Philosophy. Joseph Butler, The Analogy. David Hume, Historian. Hugh Blair, Rhetoric. Thomas Brown, Lectures on Philosophy. Jeremy Bentham, Morals. Dugald Stewart, Moral Philosophy. Geoffrey Chancer, Canterbury Tales. Edmund Spenser, Farie Queene. William Shakspere, England's Dramatist. Ben Jonson, Dramatist. John Milton, Paradise Lost. Samuel Butler, Hudibras. John Dryden, Translator of Virgil. Joseph Addison, The Spectator. Alexander Pope, Translator of Homer. Oliver Goldsmith, Poet and Novelist. William Cowper, The Task. Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab. Robert Southey, Poet Laureate. Thomas Campbell, Pleasures of Hope, II BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 145 In the left column will be found a list of classical autliors of " Books of Solidity ; " books not the mere reflection of current sentiments, but enlighteners and improvers of them. In the right column will be found a list of bril- liant poets showing the differing order of the Poetic mind. Let any one read, even cursorily, the works of these Philosophers, Dramatists, and Poets, and I feel certain they will come to this conclusion, that Bacon never wrote the plays and poems of Shakspere. Interchange of or joint authorship is quite as likely be- tween Locke and Dryden, Newton and Addi- son, Blair and Cowper, &c., &c., as between Bacon and Shakspere. Do not my dear readers take my ipse dixit, — read and judge for your- selves. Take Bacons advice about reading, which is after this fashion, read a book not with the object of finding faults, but to weigh and consider its statements. Let the reader ask himself whether the statements of the author be true or fallacious, built upon facts or hypotheses, and having I, ' \'- 146 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. ducided those points it matters not from wliat quarter the book comes. Every man being endowed with the faculty of judging, it is the reader's own fault if he allows his prejudices to rob him of the benefits of literature. Before dismissing the subject I have to say a few words more in acknowledgment of the diflficulty in refuting the arguments of such men as Nathaniel Holmes, because their con- jectures and improbabilities have to be met with an almost utter absence of external informa- tion relative to Shakspere's Dramatic history. Were it my cue to descant upon the writings of our great poet "whose works were to charm unborn ages — to sweeten our sympathies — to beguile our solitude — to enlarge our hearts, and to laugh away our spleen " — " the field would be almost as boundless as the sea, vet as full of beauty and variety as the land." I should be oppressed, as it were, by abundance and filled with matter and material for a vol- ume, — inopem me copia fecit But as it is, the " Genius of Biography " has neglected Shaks- BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 147 pere, withheld his personal history, told us nothing of the development of his wondrous mind. The channels of his onward career are dried up ; the sources from which he obtained his noble and unrivalled characteristics arc- undiscovered — all mere tradition — nothing ab- solute and definite — amazement fills up the void. These materials being denied -there is nothing to fall back upon but his incompara- ble genius, marvellous conception, mimetic power and wonderful invention, which arc foolishness and a stumbling-block to the " Ba- conian Theorists," who consider it simply pre- posterous and absurd that the matchless works known by his name, plays the most philo- sophical in the English language should ha\e been written by a man whose life is so ob- scure and who was so utterly negligent of his writings that he neither collected nor edited them ! Granted — the fact is melancholic — never mind — What knowledge have we of Homer's life .f* None! Some placing him either in David or Solomon's reign — others affirm- 148 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. ing that he was begot of a Genius in the isle of lo and orn of a Virgin who died upon giving birth to the child who was brought up by Maeon, King of the Lydians. His obscure life has not obscured his writings. The Iliad and the Odyssey have outlived the walls of Troy. Not one word of his everlasting writ- ings has been lost since the days of Pisistra- tus, though they were not collected and pub- lished during the author's life, but were merely sung and retained by memory. The writings of both Homer and Shakspere " like a mighty ship have passed over the sea of time, not leaving a mere ideal track, which soon alto- gether disappears, but leaving a train of glory in its wake, present and enduring, daily act- ing upon our minds, and ennobling us by grand thoughts and images." I conjure my readers not to let " Shaks- pere be hurled from his throne, and made to abdicate or give up the sceptre of that glori- ous kingdom of English letters over which he has for nearly three hundred years ruled su- l n i! i I .: II 'it "ilTl BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 149 preme, by a free-thinking scoffer like Nathan- iel Holmes, without carefully examining into the qualifications of the " Usurper Bacon." I ask them to bear with me while I say a few words upon the internal evidence of Shakspere's claims. He has left us rare words, idioms, phrases, epithets, and qualifying terms that are not found in the writings of Bacon. His use of contradictory terms to intensify the expression of a thought is one of the characteristics of his style ; in this particular the difference be- tween the writings of Shakspere and Bacon is only too apparent. Charles W. Stearns, in his delightful and refreshing volume,* has collected these pecu- liar epithets, contradictory phrases, and qual- ifying terms and pointed out Shakspere's use of what is termed in Rhetoric, the " trans- ferred epithet," which favours the brevity re- * The Shakspere Treasury of Wisdom and Knowl- edge. Putnam & Sons, New York, 1869. ' 150 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. quired in Dramatic writing, and cited the following examples : " Sixth part of each 1 A trembling contribution^ * The term " trembling " is here transferred from the person paying the money to the money itself, and makes us instantly compre- hend and sympathize with the emotions caused by the oppressive exaction of the tax-gatherer. " The wry -necked fife''' — the small and straight musical instrument, when played upon, causing the player to twist his neck awry. " Frighted fields'" ^ and ''Stumbling night'" % convey at once the idea of herds being frightened in the fields, and of a person stumbling in the dark- ness of the night. " Faint primrose beds " means that their odour caused a pleasant lan- * Henry VIII. Act I. 2. Speech of the King- relative to the exactions levied by VVolsey on his subjects, the sixth part of their substance to be lev- ied without delay, under pretence of the King's wars in France. fl. Henry IV. Act III. i. % King John. Act V., 5. ■-#, BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 151 guor to those lying on them. We also find dyiui^ deck ; i^iiilly doors ; inislirinking station. The passages in which they occur when read with the context will thoroughly explain the meaning of the transferred epithet. Shakspere's list of epithets and qualifying terms are given at great length by Chas. W. Stearns, hundreds of examples, which may be greatly extended by running the eye down almost any page of Mary Cowden Clarke's Concordance, though such a method for per- fecting the list is not to be recommended, but the rather, as Stearns suggests, by way of a pleasing and profitable exercise, the students of Shakspere should carefully read through his plays and poems and sonnets for the pur- pose of classifying his characteristic phrases and expressions. The more this is done by the students the more thoroughly will they be convinced that Bacon did not write the works of Shakspere, Take our poet's scathing denunciations and marvellous epithets, when he wishes to Si!' ■ Si :lilH 152 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. i make vice repugnant and exhibit the monster in all its native hideousness, with " the primal eldest course upon't." " One after another," says a modern critic,* " in dismal processionj he leads the culprits out, to take their place in a pillory that will last as long as language, making them hateful in a single line, some- times in a single epithet — " Lean faced Envy;" "Back-wounding Calumny;" "Tiger-footed Rage ; " " Vaulting Ambition ; " " Viperous Slander," " whose tongue outvcnoms all the worms of Nile ; " Jealousy, " The Green-eyed Monster;" Ingratitude, "The Marble-hearted Fiend ; " " More hideous than the Sea Mon- ster ! " and that most heinous form of it " Filial Ingratitude " he puts it in its perfect place in these two lines : — Is it not as this mouth should tear this hand For lifting food to't ? Avarice the " ambitious foul impurity," that * Bible Truths with Shaksperian parallels, by James Brown, 1864. . -S o 153 The BACON versus SHAKSPERE. "grows with such pernicious root Deceitful ness, Which to betray doth wear an angel's face, Seize with an eagle's talons. The relentless implacability that is beastly, savage, devilish. The deep duplicity that can' " smile and smile, and be a villain." The Hypo- crisy, that " with devotion's visage, and pious action," can " sugar o'er the Devil himself." There is nothing like these epithets in Bacon's writings— no parallels. In these mat- ters Shakspere was not a plagiarist or imita- tor of Bacon, and for this reason, that there does not occur in the prose writings of Bacon any- thing of the kind to imitate. The philosopher's expressions of thought are more logical, he does not require the abundant use of qualifying adjec- tives and qualifying terms, which are to the Poet what colours are to the painter. The imagina- tion of the poet may be compared to the gorg- eous colouring of such painters as Rubens Titian, and Turner; whereas, the dry facts of the philosopher may be compared to the works ' i If '54 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 1. ■ •vi I i of llic c'tclier and engraver, yet capable of great beauty of expression, as in the prints of Rem- brandt, Morghen and Woollet. I desire not to detract anytliing from Bacon, neither do I wish to unduly exalt Shaks- pere, nor to be accused of blind admiration of him. Arcades Ambo, "twins of learning;" "two incomparable men," one the " Prince of Poets," the other the " Prince of Philoso- phers." In the reign of L^lizabeth they held the position that Raffaelle and Titian held in art ; one for drawing, the other for painting. The Poet, the Philosopher, and the Painter, each and severally, had consummate abilities and are deserving all the praise bestowed on them by those who are familiar with their writings and works. Sir Joshua Reynolds, in one of his discourses, says : — " Raffaelle and Titian seemed to have looked at nature for different purposes ; they had the power of extending their view to the whole ; the one looked only to the general effect produced by form, the other as produced by colour." So may it be i BACON versus SHAKSPERE. '55 ■I said of Hacon and Shakspcre — they looked at nature differently, more particularly human nature. In the power of delineating human nature and in the creation of characters, no comparison can be instituted between them ; in these gifts Shakspere stands pre-eminent and unrivalled. Like as we turn our eyes to Titian to find ex- cellence with regard to colour and light and shade in the highest degree, so we turn our eyes to Shakspere for all the varying light and shade in man. His range laLes in all be- tween, and includes the loftiest and the lowli- est characters ; he makes all his characters ex- hibit themselves ; there was no human great- ness he could not portray. And not content with the chiaro-sairo, as it were, of human nature, he has coloured his drama with glori- ous beings that "look not like inhabitants of the earth and yet are on it." Bacon's mental constitution was utterly distinct from Shaks- pere's, he lacked that Genius, that deep jDoetic fire, that breadth of sympathy which embraced in i' 156 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. all nature from " the soft and tender fork of a poor worm," or the "envious worm " that galls the infants of the spring Too oft, before their buttons be disclosed. Hamlet Act I. 3 or that bites the bud Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air, Or dedicate his beauty to the same. Titus Andronicus Act III. 2 or the Poor harmless fly That with his pretty buzzing melody, Came here to make us merry, and thou hast kill'd him. Measure for Measure Act III. i or, The poor beetle, that we tread upon In corporal sufferance, finding a pang as great As when a giant dies. to The kind life-rend'ring pelican. Hamlet Act IV. 5 or to the Poor deer weeping in the needless stream, making a testament Vs worldlings do, giving their sum of more To that which hath too much. As You Like It Act II. 2 lifj I BACON versus SHAKSPERE. »S7 or to 'I'he hot and fiery steed Which his aspiring rider seem'd to know, With slow but stalely pace keeping on his course. Richard II. Act V. 2 In short, Bacon lacked that "milk of human kindness," that large-hearted sympathy for the whole human race which in the aggregate was Shakspere. Thomas Carlyle, who is no mean authority, and whose influence over contemporaneous literature still continues powerful, says in one of his lectures on Heroes and Hero Worship: — " The calm creative perspicacity of Shaks- pere is unexampled. The thing Shakspere looks at reveals not this or that place of it, but its inmost heart and generic secret: it dissolves itself as in light before him, so that he discerns the perfect structure of it. Crea- tive, we said ; poetic creation, what is this but seeing the thing suflficiently ? The word that will describe the thing, follows of itself from such clear intense sight of the thing. And 158 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. is not Shakspere's morality, his va/otir, can- dour, tolerance, truthftdness ; his whole victori- ous strength and greatness, which can tri- umph, visible there, too ? Great as the world ! No twisted poor convex-concave mirror, re- flecting all objects with its own convexities and concavities ; a perfectly level mirror : — that is to say withal, if we will understand it, a man justly related to all things and men, a good man. It is truly a lordly spectacle how this great soul takes in all kinds of men and objects, a Falstaff, an Othello, a Juliet, a Cori- olanus ; sets them all forth to us in their round completeness ; lovin*g, just, the equal brother of all. NOVUM ORGAN UM, and all the intellect you will Jind in BACON, is of a quite secondary order ; earthy, material poor in comparison with this. Among niod- ern men, one finds, in strictness, almost noth- ing of the same rank. Goethe alone, since the days of Shakspere, reminds me of it. Of him, too, you say that he sazv the object ; you may say what he himself says of Shakspere : — BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 159 ' His characters are like watches with dial plates of transparent crystal ; they shoiv yoti the hours like others, and the inward mechan- ism also is all visible'. " If we are indebted to Bacon for his zeal- ous and powerful labours to recall Philosophy from the study of fanciful systems to the careful interrogation and interpretation of Nature, the collecting and properly arranging of well-ascertained facts, and for those maxims for the conduct of philosophical enquiry which have contributed to the vast progress physi- cal science has made since his time, we are indebted to Shakspere for clothing the " fos- siliferous cake-dried axioms " of some ancient and modern philosophers with such freshness and rejuvenescence, and launching them with such force, emphasis, and originality that they strike us ao-ain as if for the first time. '• My blood," says Othello, " begins my safer guide to rule, and passion obscures my best judgment ; " and I feel similarly oppressed in having to write so very much to prove what w t6o BACON versus SHAKSPERE. scarcely demands proof for those who have impartially and carefully read and reflected on the writings of these two great men. I feel a sort of ill humour rising up within me at the " monstrous labour " I have given myself, and the waste of time it will be to my readers in 'pursuing the subject any further — yet there may be some who may want to make " assur- ance doubly sure," and to whom other argu- ments might not be amiss. The first translation of the Bible into the vernacular, was that by William Tyndale, a Glos- tershire man, who considered his native vocabu- lary more significant and equally as elegant as those polysyllabic expressions derived from the language of Ancient Rome. The Tyndale and Coverdale Bible of 1535,* which our fore- fathers welcomed so warmly, and suffered so much for, is the basis of the 161 1 edition now in common use. The vernacular dialect of * Geneva Bible, 2nd year of Elizabeth's reign, 1560. Bishop's Bible, 1568. sH--?i U BACON versus SHAKSPERE. i6i the Cotsvvold district of Glostershire, and that of the Stratford district of Warwickshire is very similar ; any one familiar with it and with his Bible and his Shakspere must have noticed how many words and expressions used by Tyndale in his translation, and by our poet in his plays, are to this day commonly used by the peasantry of Gloster and Warwick Shires, some of whom have never read a line of Shakspere, and are only familiar with the Bible through the services of that Church, where the Daily Lessons and the Psalms are read in pure English. This I can testify from having been partially educated in the village upon whose " knowl " stands a monument erected, since my school days, to the memory of the martyr who, on the 6th day of October, 1536, perished at the stake for translating that edition of the New Testament which he had promised to give to the ploughboys of Glostershire. From a most .delightful book, which ought to be in the library of every lover of Shakspere, written by James Walter, and entitled " Shaks- ¥\ 162 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. I iM peares Home and Rural Life'' with illustrations of Localities and Scenes around Stratford-on- Avon by the Heliotype process * I have taken the following excerpts because they are so apt and conclusive for my argument, and better ex- press what I know and feel on the subject than any words of mine could : — " John R. Wise, who has discoursed sweetly, and with profound knowledge and appreciation of the great poet, has carefully noted his use of Warwickshire provincialisms and allusions to his native county; as also the more striking phrases found in his plays, and which are still to be heard in the mouths of the Warwick- shire peasantry, who, now, more than anybody else Speak the tongue That Shakspere spake. " If Shakspere's own style and manner, which is undoubtedly the case, has had a marked influence on subsequent writers, and * Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, London 1874. BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 163 even on the English language itself, still his native county left some traces of its dialect even upon him." " Johnson, himself born in a neighbouring county, first pointed out that the expression " a mankind witch," in the " Winter's Tale " (Act II. scene 3), was a phrase in the Midland Countie-^ for a violent woman. And Malone, too, showed that the singular expression in the " Tempest " (Act I. scene 2), " we cannot miss him," was a provincialism of the same district. It is not asserted that certain phrases and ex- pressions are to be found nowhere else but in Shakspere and Warwickshire. But it is interesting to know that the Warwickshire girls still speak of their " long purples " and " love in idleness ; " and that the Warwickshire boys have not forgotten their " deadmen's fingers ; " and that the " nine mens morris " is still played on the corn-bins of the Warwick- shire farm stables, and still scored upon the greensward ; and that Queen Titania would not have now to complain, as she did in the a 164 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. m 11 ^i'^, I Midsummer Night's Dream, that it was choked up with mud; and that "Master Slender" would find his shovel-board still marked on many a public house table and window sill ; and that he and " Master Fenton," and " good Master Lrook," would, if now alive, hear them- selves still so called." " Take now, for instance, the word " deck," which is so common throughout the Midland Counties, but in Warwickshire is so often re- stricted to the sense of a hand of cards, and which gives a far better interpretation to Gloster's speech in the Third Part of " King Henry VI." (Act V. Scene i):— Alas, that Warwick had no movQ forecast, But whiles he thought to steal the single ten, The King was slyly finger'd frcn the deck : as, of course there might be more Kings than one in the pack, but not necessarily so in the hand. The word " forecast," too, both as verb and noun, is very common throughout both Warwickshire and the neighbouring Counties, This word " forecast " is also used by Spenser, RKSi BACON versus SHAKSPERE, 165 and others of Shakspere's contemporaries; and, though obsolete, except among the peas- antry of the Midland districts, is still employed by the best American Authors." * Again in Autolycus's song, in the " Winter s Tale "(Act IV. Scene 2):— The white sheet bleaching on the hedge — With heigh ! the sweet birds, O, how they sing ! Doth set my pugging-tooth on edge, P'or a quart of ale is a dish for a King. All the commentators here explain pugging- tooth,! as a thievish tooth, an explanation which certainly itself requires to be explained; but most Warwickshire country people could tell them that pugging-tooth was the same as peg- ging or peg-tooth, that is the canine or dog- * " Forecasts " used in the daily Weather bulletins, issued from Washington, See Charles W. Stearns's "Shakspere Treasury" for Americanisms in Shakspere. t See Nares, his Glossary, Words, &c., illustrative of the works of English Authors, particularly Shaks- pere and his Contemporaries. London : 1822. ' H: W W-' It m m 166 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. tooth. " The child has not its pegging-teeth yet," old women still say. And thus all the difficulty as to the meaning is at once cleared. But there is an expression used both by Shakspere and his contemporaries, which must not be so quickly passed over. Wher- ever there has been an unusual disturbance or ado, the lower orders round Stratford-nn-Avon in\-ariably characterize it by the phrase " there has been old work * to-day," which well inter- prets the Porter's allusion in " Macbeth " (Act III. Scene 3), " If a man were porter of hell- gate, he should have old turning the key," which is pimply explained in the notes as " fre- quent," but which means far more. So, in the Merchant of Venice (Act IV, Scene 2,) Portia says, " We shall have old\ swearing ; " that is. * Similar to the provincial phrase " great to do." t Old is used occasionally in the sense of custom- ary, or familiar, or usual. Your husband is in his old lunes again, i. e., customary fit of lunacy. M. W. of W. Act IV. 2. " Thou knowest my old ward," says Falstaff. I. Henry IV. Act II. 4. Old acquaintances of this isle. Othello, Act II. i. BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 167 very hard swearing ; and in the " Merry Wives of Windsor " (Act I. Scene 4), we find " Here will be an old abusing of God's patience, and the King's English ; " and in the Second Part of King Henry IV. (Act II. Scene 4), " By the Mass, here will be old Utisy * And so also, in " Much Ado about Nothing " (Act V. Scene 2), Ursula says : — " Madam, you must come to your Uncle; yonder's old coil\ at home;" and to this day, round Stratford is this use of " old " still kept up by the lower classes." In the Duke of Bourbon's speech (King Henry V. Act III. Scene 5) we have I will sell my dukedom To buy a slobberly and a dirty farm. Slobbery or slobberly, is to this day applied to the wet dirty Warwickshire by-roads ; in Glos- tershire, slobbery would 1; now * Utis or Utas, the eighth day, or the space of eight days, after any festival. " Utas of Saynte Hil- arye," Holinshed. t Coil. — Noise, tumult, difficulty, trouble — mortal coil. Hamlet, Act III. i. Old coil^ much or great tiouble, abundant, frequent. liii! ■ 1 68 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. v\ sense of spilling water on a Hoor, or of a child while feeding, messing or wetting the front of his " pin-be-fore." Again we have slabby for wet clayish ground, or for a glutinous kind of mixture, as in the incantation of the Witches in Macbeth (Act IV. Scene i). Make the gruel thick and slab. In Hamlet the grave digger says of himself " I have been sexton here, man and boy, thirty years," a common Warwickshire expression to denote a great length of time, — I have been employed here, man and boy, so many years. " Make her grave straighC Straight for quick- ly, is common enough in most of the Midland Counties. " D6't straight," and also " I'll come straight," are as " familiar as household words." Straight and straightway in the sense of quickly, at once, instantly, immediately, are commonly used by Shakspere. In the New Testament, " And they straightway left their Nets " (St. Matthew IV. 20). "And they went into Caper- naum ; and straightway on the Sabbath day He entered the synagogue " (St. Mark I. 2 1). " And BACON versus SHAKSPEKE. [69 when they out of the ship, straight- were come way they knew Him " (St. Mark VI. 54). " Then fell she down straightway at his feet and yielded up the ghost " (Acts V. 10). " I sent straightway to thee " (Acts XXIII. 30). Straightway means instantly in all these texts. A peculiar use of the verb " quoth," the Saxon preterite of to speak, is very noticeable among the common people in Warwickshire. " Jerk, (/7coth the ploughshare," that is, the ploughshare went jerk. It is universally applied to inanimate things, and is used precisely in this sense by the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet (Act I. Scene 3), " Shake, quoth the dovehouse." In the fable of the Belly and the Members in " Coriolanus," the Stomach gives this reply to the rebellious limbs : — True it is, my incorporate friends, quoth he. That I receive the general food at first. Which you do live upon : and fit it is, &c. Again there is a peculiar use of the per- sonal pronoun in Warwickshire, which cannot 170 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. ^l/Hct*\ be better illustrated than by Shakspere him- self. Thus, in Romeo and Juliet (Act II. Scene 4), IVLercutio says of Tybalt, " He rests me his minisii' rest ; " and Hotspur, in the First Part of King Henry IV. (Act III. Scene i), thus speaks ; — See how this river comes me, cranking in And cuts me, from the best of all my land, A huge half moon, a monstrous cantle * out. Abbot, in his Shaksperian Granmiar, has pointed out that the pronoun mc is very often used by Shakspere, in virtue of its represent- ing the old dative, where we should use /or me, from me, with me. Give me your present to one Master Bassanlo. M. of V. II. 2. Who does me this ? Hamlet II. 2. Sayest thou me so ? II. Hen. VI. II. I. The sack that thou hast drunk me could have bought me lights as good, cheap at the dearest chandlers in Europe. I Hen. IV. III. 3. * Cantle, a part or share. I/I Jul. CX, I. 2. BACON versus SHAKSPERE. He pluck'd me ope his doublet. He pluck'd me to her trencher. He thrusts me himself into the company. The skilfu, shepherd peerd..ce;!ai™lr'''-^- ir., I . M. of Ver. I. x Knock ;w here, • ^- 3- T ^„ I T. of Sh. I. 2 I made me „o more ado .... I followed me close. But hear « this. I Hen. IV. II. 4. Vou'll bear me a bang for that. '"''' ^^' ^'' '' And hold „.pace in deep e,perin,ent.^"'' '"'"' ^ '' J Hen. IV. Ill, ,, _ Falstaff says, in praise of good sherris-sack m the Second Part of King Henry IV. Act IV, Scene 3, ■• It ascends me into the brain dnes me there all the foolish and dull and crudy vapours." Pandarus in Troilus and Cresstda (Act I. Scene 2), thus describes the love of Helen for Troilus. "She came, and Piits me her white hand to his clover chin " Tlie expressive compound blood-bolterd in Macbeth (Act IV. Scene ,), which the critics I 1I;: I 'i,i '" V : i mi ' ft 1 172 BA CON versus SNA KSPERE. have all thought meant blood-stained ; now bolter is peculiarly a Warwickshire word signi- fying to clot, collect, or cake, as snow does in a horse's hoof, thus giving the phrase a far greater intensity of meaning. There is the word gull in Timon of Athens (Act II. Scene i). But I do fear When every feather sticks in his own wing, Lord Timon will be left a naked gull, Which flashes now a phcenix ; which most of the critics have thought alluded to a sea gull, whereas it means an unfledged nestling, which to this day is so called in War- wickshire. And this interpretation throws a Hght on a passage in First Part of " King Henry VI " (Act V. Scene i). You used me so As that ungentle gull, the cuckoo's bird, Useth the sparrow ; — where some notes amusingly say that the word alludes to the voracity of the cuckoo. The Warwickshire farmer's wives, even now, call their young goslings gulls. BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 173 Contain yourself is a very common War- wickshire phrase for restrain yourself ; Timon says to his creditor's servant, " contain yourself good friend." (Timon of Athens, Act II. Scene 2). In Troilus and Cressida (Act V. Scene 2) Ulysses says : — O contain yourself. Your passion draws ears hither. In the Two Gentlemen of Verona (Act IV. Scene 4), we find Launce using the still rarer phrase of " keep himself," in the same sense to his dog Crab, when he says, " O ! 'tis a foul thing when a cur cannot keep {i. e. restrain) himself in all companies." " It is after all," says James Walter, " touch- ing to think that, amidst the change that is ever going on, the same phrases that Shaks- pere spake, are still spoken in his native county, and that the flowers are still called by the same names which he called them." " Sometimes," says a recent writer who visited Stratford-on-Avon and its neighbour- hood, " the cottagers unconsciously quoted 174 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. I Shakspere's familiar phrases — as Bedouins quote the Bible — and use curious old Warwick- shire words which are rarely heard elsewhere, but which carry us back irresistibly to the days when Shakspere was wandering here, and work- ing for us for all time." From Shakspereana Genealogica,* in the chapter headed " Remarks on Names belong, ing to Warwickshire, alluded to in several Plays," the following excerpts are taken : — " Mr. Halliwell has shown that persons of the name of Ford, Page, Horne, or Herne belonged to Stratford.t In the records of the borough, published by that excellent writer, notices of receipts and payments are found as follows : — 1597, R. of Thomas Fordes wiffe vi s. viij d. 1585, Paid to Herne for iij dayes work, ij s. vj d. A daughter of Robert Ford was buried at Stratford in 1562-3. John Page is found there * Compiled by George Russell French, Architect, pub- lished by Macmillan & Co. : London & Cambridge, 1869. t Merry Wives of Windsor — Dramatis PERSONiE. I BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 175 in 1566; and one of the same name lived in Henley Street in 1585; Joan, wife of John Page, was buried in January, 1583-4; John Page and his wife are mentioned in the will of Agnes Arden, 1580; a John Page died in 16 12. Mr. Halliwell also proved that a Thomas Page lived in Windsor in 1562 ; and that several persons of the name of Ford resided there from 1571 to 1600; and also that persons of the name of Evans belonged to Windsor in the latter half of the sixteenth century. But it is quite possible that the Poet selected the name of the quaint " Welsh Parson," Sir Hugh Evans, from an acquaintance in Stratford, where several Welsh families resided in his time. John Evans is found there in 1585 ; Evans Rice, Evans Meredith, and Hugh ap John, all flourished there at the same period. In Lodge's Rosalind^ or Enphues Golden Legacie, the story which furnished Shakspere with the plot of his charming comedy, it is stated that the old Knight, called Sir John of Bordeaux, had three sons, Saladyne. Fernan- 176 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. il I i dyne and Rosader ; these names are altered by the Poet to Oliver, Jaques,.and Orlando * Now it is very probable that Shakspere took the name of his Knight from an old but extinct family of great note in Leicestershire and War- wickshire, whose memory was long preserved in the latter county ; Sir Ernald, or Arnold de Boys, Arnold being easily transposed to Roland and thence we have Orlando. The manor of Weston-in-Arden was held by Sir Ernald de Boys, temp Edw. I. paying yearly to the Earl of Leicester, to whom he was Seneschal, "one hound called a Brache, and seven pence in money for all services." Dugdale, Warwick- shire, page 41. The species of hound herein specified illustrates a passage in the Induction to the Taming of the Shrew, where the lord enters from hunting : — Huntsman, I charge thee, tender well my hounds ; Bathe Merriman, — the poor cur is emboss'd, And couple Clowder with the deep-mouth'd Brache. * See Shakspere's Library, a collection of the ancient Novels, Romances, Legends, Poems and Histories, used by Shakspere ; by J. Payne Collier, Esq., F.S. ' . BACON versus SHAKSPERE. ,-^ There were four generations in succession of Lords of the Manor of Weston-in-Ardcn each of whom is called Sir Ernald de Bosco, or de Boys. The name of the melancholy Lord Jaques belongs to Warwickshire, where it is pro- nounced as one syllable ; " Thomas Jakes of Wonersh " was one of the List of Gentry of the Shire, 12 Henry VI. 1433. At the sur- render of the Abbey of Kenilworth, 26 Henry VIII. 1535, the Abbot was Simon Jakes, who had the large pension of 100/. per a7t7ium granted to him. MonasHcoii, Vol. VI. A family by the name of Sly, rendered famous by their place in the Induction of the Taming of the Shrew, resided at Stratford, and elswhere in the County, in the Poet's time ; and he no doubt drew the portrait of the drunken tinker from the life. Stephen Sly was a labourer in the employ of William Combe, 13 Jac. I. 1616. (Page 330 Halliwell's S trat/ord Records). In the Borough Records there is an entry of a fine paid in 1630,-" Item of Joan Slie for li!-**' 178 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. breaking the Sabbath by traveling, 3s. 4d." Life of Sliakspcre, page 115. In Scene 2 (In- duction), wherein Bartholomew the Page per- sonates " the lady " of the supposed lord, Christopher Sly asks the real lord, disguised as a servant, — What must I call her ? Lord. Madam, Sly A'lce Madam, or Joan Madam ? One of the servants tells Kit Sly, — Why, Sir, you know no house, nor such maid ; Nor no such men, as you have reckon'd up — As Stephen Sly, and old John Naps of Greece, &c.* It would seem quite certain that Stephen and Joan Sly were the parents of the drunken tinker, and that the whole family would be well known to many a spectator of the play, especi- ally if acted in Warwickshire. Ihe name of the page was that of one of Shakspere's wife's brothers, Bartholomew Hathaway. Forty three * Mr. Halliwell conjectures that " Old John Naps of Greece," should be of " Greet " whi:h is a hamlet in the Parish of Winchcombe, Co. Gloucester, but at no great distance from Stratford. BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 179 years after Shakspere's death another Warwick- shire poet alludes to the " Sheer ale " which " Marian Hacket, the fat ale-wife of Wincot," scored against Kit Sly* Sir Aston Cockain, in 1659, addressed an Epistle in verse to his friend (Sir) " Clement Fisher of Wincot ; " the following lines have been often quoted : — " Shakspere, your Wincot ale hath much renovvn'd, That fox'd a beggar so, by chance was found Sleeping, that there needed not many a word To make him believe he was a lord. But you affirme, and it seems most eager 'Twill make a Lord as drunk as any beggar, Bid Norton brew such ale as Shakspere fancies Did put Kit Sly into such lordly trances ; And let us meet there, for a fit of gladness. And drink ourselves merry in sober sadness." The drunken tinker calls himself " old Sly's son of Burton Heath ; " this locality may be * Induction. Sc. ii. — Sly says : — " Ask Marian Hacket, the fat ale-wife of Wincot, if she know me not : if she say I am not fourteen pence on the score for sheer ale, score me up for the lying'st knave in Christendom." The name of Hacket is still found in the neighbourhood of Stratford. i8o BACON versus SHAKSPERE. meant for Barton-on-the-Heath, which is only a few miles to the south of Stratford. In the serious business of The Taming of the Shreiv, one of Petruchio's servants is called "Curtis;" this was a Stratford name. Anne Curteys, widow, a knitter was living there in 1607; and John Curteys, a carpenter is found therein 1615. In Petruchio's household twelve or thirteen of his men servants are named, of whom, one only, the " ancient, trusty, pleasant Grumio " belongs to Italy, all the rest are most thoroughly English ; and as Philip, Nathaniel, Nicholas, Joseph, and Gabriel, are not common names, we incline to believe that Shakspere took them from his contemporaries, Philip Henslowe, Nathaniel Field, Nicholas Tooley, Joseph Taylor, and, probably, Gabriel Harvey, a poet, the friend of Spenser * Among the characters in the play of Henry V. are three soldiers, whose Christian. names are * The four first named were actors — see Colliers's Annals of the Stage, 183 1. John Murray, T ondon. BACON versus SHAKSPERE. i8i found in the Folio of 1623, and therefore very properly retained in this Edition, although usually omitted. " John Bates, Alexander Court, and Michael Williams," are private soldiers in King Henry's army. These sur- names all belong to Stratford, at the Poet's day, and it is remarkable that no biographer has yet noticed this fact ; and we are indebted to Mr. Halliwell's Records for these names, al- though they are not alluded to by him in his Notes to the play. In the Chronicle Historie of Henry the Fift, no names are given to the " three Souldiers ; " from which omission we gather that Shakspere, in the revised play, sup- plied the surnames from certain Stratford families of his acquaintance: The valiant but choleric Captain Fluellen, bears a Stratford name ; William Fluellen being- mentioned in the company of John Shakspere and George Bardolf as recusants, and not com- ing to Church, in 1592. Anne Fluellen, widow, lived at Stratford, in 1604, and appear^ in the Chamberlain's books. l82 BACON versus SHAKSPERE &■ l-i- Many places in Warwickshire are the scenes of action, or are mentioned in the plays. In the Firs/ part of King Henry IV. Falstaff arrives near Coventry with his " scarecrows," as he calls his 150 pressed men, "slaves as ragged as Lazarus in the painted cloth," with whom he is ashamed to march through Coventry, on their way to Sutton-Coldfield where they are to rest that night ; Act IV. Scene 2. And when Prince Hal enters on the scene, Falstaff accosts him in his familiar fashion, — " What Hal ? How now, mad wag ! what a devil dost thou in Warwickshire? In the Third part of King Henry VI. Act IV. Sc. 2, the action is laid in ''A Plain in Warwickshire :''' and Sc. 3 is Edward's Camp near Warwick. One of the architectural glories of Warwickshire is introduced by name. Second part of King Henry VI. Act IV. Sc. 4, My gracious Lord, retire to Killingworth, Until a power be raised to put them down. and the action of Sc. 9 is laid at Kenilworth Castle. Enter King, rt!;/rtfQuEEN on the Terrace. BACON versus SHAKSPEKE. 183 It seems strange that after a lapse of nearly three hundred years, many of the striking phrases found in the plays should still be heard among the peasantry of Warwickshire, aye, and some of the sir-names are still famil- iar to them To my mind this internal evidence is worth more than all the i/s and conjectures of Na- thaniel Holmes — the ambigucts voces — about Bacon and his parallels. As existing monu- ments, sculptures, gems, coins, and medals most powerfully and satisfactorily speak for them- selves and demonstrate the truth of Revela- tion in language which no sophistry can evade, so the dialect, idioms, and provincialisms of the Midland Counties attest the fact that the author of Shakspere's plays must have known War- wickshire well ; and we know Shakspere to have been born and buried at Stratford-on-Avon. Under his monument in the chancel of Holy Trinity Church are these words : — Judicio Pylium, genio Socratem, arte Maronem. In judgment a Nestor, in genius a Socrates, in art a Virgil. IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 !Si M 111112,5 ':\ tt |||||22 I.I m 1.25 2.0 1.8 14 i 1.6 "/} <^ /} a c^: A ^2 'm o .!>' 4'' ^ ¥ w Phol ^ Scmces Corporation 73 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14S80 (716) 872-4503 iV ^q\' ^ 4^ o ^ Ill 1 1! s I ; fi ' I !,l fJ'Ei 184 BACON verstis SHAKSPERE. which, of course, according to the " Baconian Theorists," is a lying epithet, " a huge transla- tion of hypocrisy." The line is only applica- ble to Bacon, who was the morning star of poetry, the guide, the pioneer of all philosophy ; the great Lord Chancellor who had all the attributes of a poet — breadth of thought ; depth of insighr; weight of matter; brevity, force, and beauty of expression ; brilliant met- aphor ; using all nature as a symbol of thought, and possessing that supreme power of imag- ination which is necessary to make an artistic creator, adding man to the Universe. Thousands of scholars, reflective beings, honest and impartial judges and critics think the line only applicable to Shakspere. From the Wilds of Canada, the Prairies of America, and the Plains of Australia, many loving Pil- grims have gone to his monument and wept after reading the second line of the epitaph : — Terra tegit, populus mceret, Olympus habet. The earth covers him, the people mourn for him, [Olympus has him. BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 185 and with their Sorrow's eye, glazed with blinding tears have gone to that flat stone bearing the follow- ing inscription : — * Good friend for Jesus' sake forbeare, To digg the dust encloased heare ; Bleste be the man that spares these stones, And curst be he that moves my bones ; *It is very doubtful whether these lines were written by Shakspere — as some have pretended they were — the pro- bability is that they were written by the poet's son-in-law, Dr. Hall, to whose wife, Susanna, he devised all his real estate for life, and then entailed upon her first son and his heirs male. It was a stereotyped form, a quatrain very generally adopted before Shakspere's time, and occasion- ally used after his time in the same way that a similar curse in Latin is found in the Catacombs of Rome. On not a few of the stones in this ancient place of Christian Sepulture, anathemas are pronounced against such impi- ous men as shall dare disturb the sanctity of the grave. Male Pereat Insepvltvs Jaceat Non Resvrgat CvM JvDA Partem Fabeat Si Quis Sepvlcrvm Hvnc Violaverit. (May he perish badly, and, deprived of sepulture, may i86 BACON versus SHAKSPERE. and reverentially watered it with a " teary shoure." The injunction which the lines convey has hitherto been obeyed, the disturbing the poet's bones has not been attempted by any sacrileg- ist ; but there has been a worse sacrilege wan- he lie dead and never rise ; may he share lots with Judas, he who violates this sepulchre). Nathaniel Holmes writes thus irreverently of the Poet and the Epitaph : — " Shakspere not deeming he had written anything worthy of preservation, stole in silence to his grave beneath a doggrel Epitaph reputed to have been written by himself, and certainly suitable enough for his bones, by the side of which the knowing friends, who erected a monument over him, caused to be inscribed a Latin Memento which might indeed do honor to the ' Star of Poets ' (Francis Bacon) : — " "Judicio Pylium, genio Socratem, arte Maronem, Terra tegit, populus moeret, Olympus habet ; " any man might wonder, if he did not laugh outright, to see this son of Momus wearing thus his Lion's skin in his tomb." This is high treason against the crowned head of the English Drama. — It is simply monstrous. BACON versus SHAKSPERE. 187 tonly and ignorantly committed by these " Baconian Theorists " in trying to rob Shaks- pere of his literary fame, and disturbing the innocent and sacred belief of thousands and tens of thousands that Shakspere is himself, not Bacon. THE END.