1
 
 x -
 
 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN
 
 EUPHUES 
 THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 BY 
 
 PARKER WOODWARD 
 
 LONDON 
 GAY AND BIRD 
 
 12 & 13 HENRIETTA STREET, STRAND 
 1907 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 ' EUPHUES ' 
 
 ' Is he that is apte by goodnesse of witte, and appliable 
 by readines of will to learning, having all other qualities 
 of the minde and partes of the bodie that must an other 
 day serve learning, not troubled, mangled and halfed, but 
 sounde, whole, full and hable to do their office. . . . And 
 how can a cumlie bodie be better employed than to serve 
 the fairest exercise of Goddes greatest gifte, and that is 
 learning.' 4 Tlie Scholemaster? 1570. 
 
 THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 ' I am a professed Peripatician, mixing profit with 
 pleasure, and precepts of doctrine with delightful inven- 
 tion." 1 Nash, ' Anatomic of AbsurditwJ 1589.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 I MAKE no apology for these essays in Elizabethan 
 biography ; nor are they published for gain, as 
 I well know they will only interest a small 
 and somewhat diffident group of readers. I am 
 either right or demon strably wrong, and have 
 endeavoured to be as accurate and as relevant as 
 the subject admits. If these essays induce others 
 to elucidate the subject and trace other ramifica- 
 tions which investigation should bring to light, I 
 am content. The ' Bacon mania/ according to a 
 reviewer in the Contemporary Magazine for July, 
 1907, is 'happily dead.' The orthodox critics, 
 freed from the disturbance of this form of mental 
 excitement, may be trusted to peruse these pages 
 in a condition of philosophic calmness. 
 
 PARKER WOODWARD. 
 
 vn
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PACK 
 
 I. EUPHUES - 1 
 
 II. IMMERITO - -25 
 
 III. THE RED-NOSED MINISTER - - 54 
 
 IV. KIT MARLOWE - - 71 
 
 V. SPORTING KYD - - 82 
 
 VI. PYEBOARD - - 96 
 
 VII. THE PERIPATICIAN - 111 
 
 VIII. CHRISTOPHER SLY - - 133 
 
 ix. SLY'S EDUCATION - - 149 
 
 X. FILUM LABYRINTHI - - 163 
 
 XI. THE ARTE OF ENGLISH POESIE - - 172 
 
 EPILOGUE - - 185 
 
 APPENDIX CIPHER HISTORY - 189 
 
 IX
 
 EUPHUES 
 THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 EUPHUES 
 
 I SEEK in this chapter to reopen the question of the 
 authorship of the following Tudor writings : 
 
 PBOSE - PK.NTED. 
 
 1. ' Euphues' Anatomy of Wit ' - - 1579 
 
 2. ' Euphues and his England ' - - 1580 
 
 DRAMA. 
 
 3. ' Woman in the Moon ' - - . 1597 
 
 4. 'Campaspe' 1584 
 
 5. 'Gallathea' - ... 3593 
 
 6. ' Sapho and Phao ' .... 1584 
 
 7. ' Endimion ' 1591 
 
 8. 'Midas' - . 1593 
 
 9. ' Mother Bdmbie ' - - . 1594 
 
 10. ' Love's Metamorphosis ' - - - 1601 
 
 PAMPHLET. 
 
 11. ' Pappe with an Hatchet ' - - 1589 
 
 1
 
 2 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 the above, Nos. 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 11, were 
 first printed without any author's name. The 
 second edition o No. 1, and the first edition of 
 No. 2, were printed as by John Lyly, Master of 
 Arts. No. 11 was attributed to Lyly by Gabriel 
 Harvey, and Nos. 3 and 10 were first printed as by 
 him in the years 1597 and 1601. 
 
 The plays were all what are known as Court 
 Comedies, and they were in each case first per- 
 formed before the Queen by the children of her 
 chapel. The boy performers afterwards performed 
 some of them at the Blackfriars Theatre, built 
 in 1596. 
 
 The years of performance are more difficult to 
 settle. Mr. Fleay has attempted solutions, but 
 the probabilities are that, with the possible excep- 
 tions of ' Midas,' which was either written or 
 rewritten after the Spanish Armada had been 
 defeated, and ' Love's Metamorphosis,' the plays 
 were all written about the period 1580-1585. Most 
 of the plays are derived from classical history or 
 legend, and, according to Mr. Crofts, familiarity is 
 shown in them with passages from Ovid, Virgil, 
 and Cicero. 
 
 Messrs. Seccombe and Allen state that ' Cam- 
 paspe ' was derived from Pliny's ' Natural History,' 
 ' Sapho ' and ' G-allathea ' from Ovid. They remark
 
 'EUPHUES' 3 
 
 the originality of form and refinement of manner 
 of the comedies. Mr. J. A. Symonds observed of 
 four at least of the comedies that each was a 
 studied panegyric of the Queen's virtue, beauty, 
 chastity, and wisdom. ' Euphues and his England ' 
 winds up with a similar panegyric, as does the 
 anonymous play of ' The Arraignment of Paris,' 
 a pastoral performed by the same children before 
 the Queen, also at a date before 1584. Professor 
 Rushton stated that the Ephoebus passages of 
 ' Euphues' Anatomy of Wit ' were almost entirely 
 translated from Plutarch on Education. Anyone 
 carefully reading the works now attributed to 
 * Lyly ' will find in them evidence of wide and 
 copious reading combined with an exceptional 
 memory. The author was familiar with Pliny, 
 Plutarch, Plato, Ovid. Aristotle, Cicero, Pithagoras, 
 and Anaxagoras. He had studied his Bible, and 
 thought much upon religion. David and Solomon 
 were favourite lives. He wrote of Tymon of 
 Athens, Diogenes, the Laborynth of Crete, of 
 Apollo, Pan, Proteus, Orpheus, Venus, Vulcan, 
 and other gods of ancient mythology. He had 
 read of Homer and the Trojans, of Dido, Titus, 
 Cassar, Cleopatra, Cornelia, Tarquin and Lucretia, 
 Troilus and Cressida, Damon and Pithias, Hero 
 and Leander, and the fable of the Phoenix. He 
 
 12
 
 4 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 was familiar with falconry and hunting. He 
 affirmed ' Philosophy, Physic, Divinity, shall be 
 my study.' M. Jusserand noticed in ' Euphues ' 
 that conversations are there reported in which are 
 found the tone of well-bred persons of the period. 
 
 One of the earliest of the plays, 'Campaspe,' 
 gives evidence of a somewhat stoical purpose in 
 the line, 
 
 1 Be content to live unknown and die unfound.' 
 
 A similar idea is to be found in the play of ' The 
 Misfortunes of Arthur,' performed by the students 
 of Gray's Inn in February, 1587-88: 
 
 * Yet let my death and parture rest obscure.' 
 
 With the preparation of this play the unhonoured 
 name of Francis Bacon was openly associated. I 
 must make some demand upon the patience of the 
 students of the literature of the Elizabethan period 
 in asking them to follow the reasons which I am 
 about to give for my belief that Francis Bacon, 
 under the pen-name of 'John Lyly,' wrote the 
 prose works of Euphues, and produced the Court 
 Comedies, most of which were collected and re- 
 printed in 1632 by Blount, who was one of the 
 publishers of the Shakespeare folio. In 1632 
 acknowledged works by Bacon were being prepared 
 for the press. Blount wrote a short dedication
 
 'EUPHUES' 5 
 
 to the 1632 collection. It contains a somewhat 
 pregnant sentence: 
 
 ' The spring is at hand, and therefore I present 
 you a Lilly growing in a Grove of Laurels' 
 
 It is true that the biliteral cipher story of 
 Francis Bacon (of the authenticity of which I am 
 satisfied) makes no claim to the authorship of 
 1 Euphues.' But it may have been intended to 
 include it under the cipher story sentence : 
 
 ' Several small ivories under no name won worthy 
 praise* As we have seen, the first part of 
 ' Euphues ' had no author's name to it. When 
 ' John Lyly ' was used it was probably as a pen- 
 name only, as distinguished from the name of some 
 actual and living sponsor, as the remainder of the 
 cipher sentence is : 
 
 ' Next, in Spenser s name also they entered into 
 an unknown world.' 
 
 Here, I think, is the distinction drawn between 
 the work ascribed to Lyly and Immerito 
 (' Shepheard's Kalendar ') and other work put forth 
 in the name of an actual person such as Spenser 
 was. 
 
 The biographers have, I infer, been misled. 
 Things are not always what they seem. 
 
 Wood, compiling his ' Ath. Oxon.' at a date 
 (1691) many years after 1579, and finding from
 
 6 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 the records of Magdalen College that a scholar 
 named John Lylie had matriculated there in 1571, 
 formed the conclusion that this person was the 
 author of ' Euphues.' 
 
 The surname, according to Wood, was a common 
 one at the college. This Lylie was, when matricu- 
 lated, described as ' plebeii films.' The material 
 date of his entering college is unknown. In 1574 
 he petitioned Lord Burleigh to be made a Fellow. 
 In 1575 he took his M.A., and in 1584 owed to 
 the bursars of the college l 3s. lOd. for his share 
 of the college provisions, ' pro communis et batellis.' 
 
 Messrs. Cooper in their ' Athen. Cantab.,' writing 
 at a still later date, assert that a certain John 
 Lillie was M.P. for Hendon in 1589, Aylesbury 
 1593, Appleby 1597, and Aylesbury again in 
 1601. Mr. Arber, on probably good grounds, 
 does not repeat this information. But he does 
 set out a statement quoted by Mr. Collier from 
 the register of St. Bartholomew, under date 
 November 30, 1606, that 'John Lyllie gent, was 
 buried.' In view of the irregular methods of 
 Mr. Collier, it is to be hoped that Mr. Arber 
 satisfied himself as to this entry. 
 
 The biographers have which is the material 
 point entirely failed to connect either Lylie the 
 1 plebeii filius ' of Magdalen College, Lillie the
 
 ' EUPHUES ' 7 
 
 M.P., or Lyllie of the burial register, with the 
 works ascribed to ' Lyly ' I make no point of the 
 spelling. That being so, we must see what help 
 may be gleaned from the works themselves, and 
 the contemporary statements of Gabriel Harvey 
 and others. 
 
 In examining the Lyly works and imputing 
 them to Francis Bacon, we bear in mind his 
 aphorism, ' He who would be secret must be a 
 dissembler in some degree.' We must also have 
 regard to what Harvey wrote to Immerito in 1^79 
 (' Two Letters ') : 
 
 ' For all your vowed and oft - experimented 
 secrecie ' ; and to the statement in ' Campaspe ' (circa 
 1582) : ' Be content to live unknown and die un- 
 found.' 
 
 Accordingly, we must not attach, as the bio- 
 graphers seem to have done, too much importance 
 to the remark of Euphues, at p. 451 of his 
 ' England ' : ' Touching whose life [Queen Mary] 
 I can say very little, because I was scarce borne ' 
 (1553-1558). More especially as a little later on he 
 had no hesitation on the score of infancy in com- 
 menting on what Elizabeth did in 1558 on coming 
 to the throne. Again, in ' Euphues' Anatomy of 
 Wit ' (1579), he complained of the disgraceful state 
 of the Oxford and Cambridge Universities (p. 140).
 
 8 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 He continues, ' But I can speake the lesse against 
 them for that I was never in them? 
 
 This statement does not quite conform with that 
 in * Euphues his England ' (1580, p. 436), where 
 he wrote of the same Universities : ' I was myself 
 in either of them, and like them both so well.' Is 
 this a cryptic reference to his having heen educated 
 at Cambridge ? 
 
 In 1581 another edition of the ' Anatomy of 
 Wit ' was printed, with a dedication to Lord de la 
 Warre, and an apology to the scholars of Oxford. 
 In the apology Lyly regrets that some thought 
 that in his article on the education of Ephoebus, 
 ' Oxford was too much defamed.' Bear in mind, 
 he does not apologize to Cambridge, though his 
 remarks had applied equally to both Universities 1 
 He added : ' If any fault be committed, impute it 
 to " Euphues " who know you not, not to Lyly 
 who hate you not.' 
 
 In the same apology are some jocularities 
 about his being sent into the country to nurse, 
 * when I tyred at a drie breast three yeares, and 
 was at the last inforced to weane myself.' It is 
 somewhat difficult to arrive at the significance of 
 this passage. Francis Bacon was certainly three 
 years at Cambridge, and, according to Rawley, his 
 chaplain, he left dissatisfied with the unfruitfulness 
 
 to
 
 'EUPHUES 1 9 
 
 of the philosophy of Aristotle. It may mean that 
 Oxford was unkind to him because he was never 
 there ! If we are to gather that the writer meant 
 to infer that he was away from college three years 
 before he published his first book, we seem to 
 obtain some confirmation of our assumption as to 
 the real ' Lyly.' Francis Bacon, according to the 
 cipher story, was the base-begotten, though not 
 bastard, son of a secret marriage of Queen Elizabeth 
 and Lord Robert Dudley, afterwards Earl of 
 Leicester. He left Cambridge in December, 1575, 
 spent most of 1576 in London sometimes at the 
 Court, sometimes at Leicester House and in Sep- 
 tember of that year left for France, in the care of 
 Sir Amyas Paulet, the English Ambassador. He 
 remained abroad (with possibly one interim visit in 
 1578, when his miniature portrait, bearing that 
 date, appears to have been painted by the Queen's 
 Court limner, Billiard) until March 20, 1578-79. 
 On the assumption of his parentage, the pen-name, 
 1 Lyly,' for his first book was suitably chosen. He 
 had just arrived from the land of the fleur-de-lys, 
 an emblem also upon the English crown, if not 
 then on the Royal Arms. As to the latter I am 
 not sure. 
 
 The ' Anatomy of Wit ' was licensed December 2, 
 1578. In 'Euphues and his England,' printed
 
 10 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 in 1580, ' Lyly ' refers to the ' Anatomy of Wit ' as 
 being ' my first counterfaite,' and hints that it was 
 mainly autobiographical ; * that it was sent to a 
 nobleman to nurse, and was hatched in the hard 
 winter with the Alcyon.' I gather from this 
 that Francis, while in Paris, procured some noble 
 friend of his in England to arrange for the publica- 
 tion, that he finished writing it (except perhaps for 
 a few letters) in December, 1578, and that the book 
 was finally published a short time after his return 
 to England. This seems confirmed by a few words 
 at the end of the first edition of Euphues' Anatomy 
 of Wit.' 
 
 ' I have now finished the first part of Euphues, 
 whom now I left ready to cross the seas to England.' 
 Ergo the writer wrote ' Euphues ' on the other 
 side of the seas. A further confirmation may be 
 found in the letter 'Euphues to Botonio/ which 
 I take to be an ' open letter ' from Francis, as 
 ' Euphues/ to Anthony Bacon, as ' Botonio.' An- 
 thony, for some reason or other, was in 1579 ordered 
 abroad. Again, I rather infer that the person who 
 required ' Lyly ' to apologize to Oxford was the 
 Earl of Leicester, who was not only father to young 
 Francis, but also Chancellor of -the Oxford Uni- 
 versity. 
 
 In the corrected (1579) edition of the 'Anatomy
 
 1 EUPHUES ' 11 
 
 of Wit,' Lyly is described as ' Master of Art/ and 
 whenever the name is subsequently used, it is 
 followed by a like description. I cannot find him 
 anywhere described as M.A. of Oxford. That the 
 author alleges himself to be M.A. tells against the 
 Francis Bacon theory, unless we can conclude one 
 of two things: either that the ' M.A.' was merely 
 part of the pen-name, or possibly that Bacon the 
 real ' Lyly ' was, upon the popularity of the first 
 edition in 1579, incorporated M.A., by way of 
 compliment from the authorities of Cambridge 
 University, one of whom, was his Trinity College 
 tutor, Whitgift, the Queen's Chaplain. Whitgift 
 was not long afterwards made Archbishop of 
 Canterbury. 
 
 To follow in this chapter the internal evidence of 
 the two parts of * Euphues,' at any length, is out 
 of the question. M. Jusserand, on the authority 
 of Dr. Landniann, has shown that, besides using 
 Plutarch, ' Lyly ' borrowed large passages from 
 the Spanish writer Guevara, and he also points out 
 that ' Euphues ' went to Athens (for which we may 
 read ' Paris ') and to England to study men and 
 Governments. This, in the light of the cipher 
 story, was precisely what Francis had been 
 expected to do, and what we know from his 
 biographer, Mr. Spedding, he successfully did at a
 
 12 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 very early age. From the cipher story we learn 
 that he returned from France refused in marriage 
 by Marguerite of Navarre, whose favourite flower, 
 the marigold, is referred to in ' Euphues and his 
 England,' at p. 462. 
 
 In view of this it is interesting to find Euphues 
 urging the study of Philosophy or Law or Divinity, 
 and to supplement such study by contemptuous 
 meditations about women. ' Euphues ' presents 
 himself to my mind as an over-educated youth, 
 whose brain was bursting to record itself on paper 
 a most necessary safety-valve. Mr. Crofts drew 
 attention to the uncalled-for puns. To us moderns 
 these puns seem poor frail things, but they bubble 
 up in ' Lyly,' Spenser, Nash, Kyd, Greene, Peele, 
 and even ' Shakespeare,' and are all of about the 
 same average weakness. 
 
 M. Jusserand and others remark the fondness of 
 1 Lyly ' for the gods of mythology. I remind 
 them that Bacon was equally interested in the 
 subject, as his ' Wisdom of the Ancients ' plainly 
 shows. ' Lyly,' like Bacon, appreciated Atalanta, 
 Orpheus, Vulcan, and many more of the ancient 
 myths. In his epilogue to * Sapho,' he refers to 
 the Labyrinth of conceits, and wishes every one a 
 thread to lead them out. Bacon in later life entitled 
 one of his papers ' Filum Labyrinthi.'
 
 'EUPHUES' 13 
 
 * Lyly ' used the simile of the ensnaring with 
 lyme-twigs that we also find in Nash, in Kyd, in 
 Shakespeare, and in Bacon's letter to Greville 
 (1594). In his prologue to 'Midas,' 'Lyly 'remarks: 
 ' For plays no invention but breedeth satietie before 
 noon.' Here we have the association of play- 
 writing with invention. When at a much later 
 date Bacon wrote that his head was * wholly 
 employed about invention,' the use of the word in 
 ' Midas ' may be some guide as to what he may 
 have alluded. The ' plebeii filius ' theory of author- 
 ship seems to me to break down before the very 
 audacity of Euphues.' He had such a fine con- 
 ceit of himself. What ' plebeii filius ' in Tudor times 
 dared have started his literary career by lecturing 
 the Court ladies ? 
 
 In 1871 Mr. W. L. Rushton published a 
 valuable pamphlet called ' Shakespeare's Euphuism.' 
 Another pamphlet may much more appropriately 
 be written about Greene's Euphuism. 
 
 Spenser, Greene, Peele, Marlowe, sold Bacon 
 the use of their names, states the cipher story, and 
 as nothing further appeared under the name Lyly 
 until many years after 1579, it seems probable that 
 Bacon preferred the protection of the name of a 
 known person to the uncertainty of a mere nom de 
 plume. That is the probable explanation of the
 
 14 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 style of Lyly being conspicuous in the prose works 
 attributed to Greene. 
 
 The absorbent sponge theory of Shakespeare's 
 acquisition of knowledge has a great vogue. Yet 
 Shakespeare, from his country associations, ought 
 to have absorbed some valuable field knowledge of 
 birds and animals. It is significant that he failed 
 to do so, and that the natural history in ' Shake- 
 speare ' is no better than it is in ' Lyly.' One 
 feature, however, is constant to Bacon, Shake- 
 speare, Peele, Lyly, Greene, and Marlowe viz., 
 the love of garden flowers. 
 
 At p. 367 of ' Euphues and his England,' Lyly 
 writes of roses, violets, primroses, gilliflowers, 
 carnations, and sweetjohns. 
 
 At p. 455 he refers to bees making their hives 
 in soldiers' helmets, an idea afterwards developed 
 in the beautiful poem written for the occasion of 
 Sir Henry Lees' retirement (in 1590) from the 
 position of Queen's Challenger at Tilt. 
 
 This poem has been assigned to Peele and also 
 to Marlowe, and begins : 
 
 * His golden locks time has to silver turned.' 
 The second verse commences : 
 
 ' His helmet now shall make a hive for bees.' 
 ' Eiidimion ' must have been an early play. It
 
 ' EUPHUES ' 15 
 
 contains much to remind one of Bacon. For 
 instance, it mentions the ebbing and flowing of the 
 sea, and has the phrase ' love should creep/ which 
 we find in Greene, in the 1623 folio Shakespeare, 
 and in one of Bacon's letters. 
 
 One of the characters of * Endimion ' refers to 
 himself as follows : 
 
 * I am an absolute microcosmus, a pettie world 
 of myself.' 
 
 This play, moreover, contains such aphoristic 
 sentences as ' Love knoweth neither friendship nor 
 kindred.' 
 
 ' Sleep is a binding of the senses, love a loosing.' 
 ' Things past may be repented, not recalled. 1 
 
 Like Bacon, 'Lyly' in 'Endimion' alludes to the 
 
 * vulgar sort,' refers to ' swelling pride,' ' standing 
 at a stay,' ' a thousand shivers,' ' an hundred eyes,' 
 ' princely favours,' ' vainglorious.' He has the 
 line, ' Always one, yet never the same,' absorbed by 
 Shakespeare for his sonnet, ' Why write I still all 
 one ever the same?'; also the phrase, 'excellent and 
 right like a woman,' which Shakespeare varied in 
 
 * King Lear ' : 
 
 ' Her voice was soft, sweet and low, 
 An excellent thing in woman/ 
 
 In all ' Lyly's ' work we have many examples of
 
 16 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 that triform construction of sentences common to 
 Bacon, Greene, and Shakespeare. Here is one : 
 * Virtue shall subdue affections, wisdom lust, 
 friendship beauty.' 
 
 In ' Midas ' was further material for the absorbent 
 ' Shakespeare ' : 
 
 'Love is a pastime for children, breeding nothing but 
 
 folly,' 
 is of kin with 
 
 ' All friendship is feigning, 
 All loving mere folly.V 
 
 ' Though my soldiers be valiant, I must not 
 therefore think my quarrels just,' is assumed to be 
 material for 
 
 ' Thrice is he armed who hath his quarrels just/ 
 
 ' Woman in the Moon ' provided more Shake- 
 spearean raw material with 
 
 ' What makes my love to look so pale and wan ?' 
 turned into 
 
 ' Why so pale and wan, fair lover ? 
 Prithee, why so pale ? 
 Men were deceivers ever/ 
 
 What if Bacon were deceiving, and these were 
 only reforgings in his fine brain of the thoughts 
 he recorded as 'Lyly'? No matter; the pilgrim-
 
 ' EUPHUES ' 17 
 
 ages of actor-managers and others to Stratford- on- 
 
 o o 
 
 Avon will probably last our day ! 
 
 According to the cipher story, Bacon wrote : * I 
 have lost therein a present fame that I may out of 
 any doubt recover it in our owne and other lands 
 after manie a long yeare.' 
 
 I fear the deceased Lord Chancellor was too 
 sanguine. The mention of Lord Chancellor brings 
 me to another feature of the ' Lyly ' works that is 
 to say, the use therein of legal terms, such as : 
 'Deed of gift,' ' statute merchant,' 'bond,' 'withdraw 
 the action,' ' accessory punished as principal,' 'con- 
 veyance,' 'join issue/ 'arraigned as a riot because 
 they clanged together in such clusters,' ' I refuse 
 the executorship,' * Liber tenens,' * a freeholder.' 
 
 Having assuredly tired my readers with these 
 internal evidences, I pass to proofs of another kind. 
 
 THE TESTIMONY OF GABRIEL HAKVEY AND 
 OTHERS. 
 
 In another chapter ('Immerito') I give some 
 account of the early association of Gabriel Harvey, 
 the brilliant young Professor of Rhetoric, with 
 young Bacon in 1579-1580. 
 
 In 1589 a pamphlet was printed anonymously, 
 entitled ' Pappe with an Hatchet.' It concerned 
 itself mainly with the Martin Marprelate dispute, 
 
 2
 
 18 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 but incidentally contained a rap at Harvey, then 
 already engaged in an amusing skirmish with 
 young Francis Bacon, battling under the names of 
 Greene and Nash. Harvey, in the part of his 
 ' Pierce' s Supererogation' (1593) which is dated 
 November, 1589, wrote: 'Pap-hatchet (for the name 
 of thy good nature is pittyfully growen out of 
 request), thy old acquaintance in the Savoy when 
 young Euphues hatched the eggs that his elder 
 friends laid (surely Euphues was someway a pretty 
 fellow : would God Lilly had always been Euphues 
 and never Pap-hatchet) : that old acquaintance 
 now somewhat straungely saluted with a new 
 resemblance is neither lullabied with thy sweet 
 Papp nor scarre-crowed with thy sour hatchet.' 
 
 In another part of ' Pierce's Supererogation,' 
 dealing with the assaults upon him in the names 
 of Greene, Lyly, and Nash, he lapses into verse : 
 
 * Aske not what Newes ? that come to visit wood : 
 My treasure is Three faces in one Hood : 
 A chaungling Triangle : a turncoat rood. 
 
 ****** 
 
 ' Three hedded Cerberus, wo be unto thee : 
 Here lyes the onely Trey, and rule of Three : 
 Of all Triplicities, the A B C. 1 
 
 Harvey goes on to say : ' Somebody oweth the 
 three-shapen Geryon a greater duty in recognisance 
 of his often promised curtesies ; and will not
 
 'EUPHUES 1 19 
 
 be found ungrateful at occasion. He were very 
 simple that would feare a conjuring Hatchet, a 
 ray ling Greene, or a threatening Nash.' A little 
 further on Harvey wrote: 'These, these were the 
 only men that I ever dreaded : especially that 
 same odd man Triu Litteraru that for a linsey- 
 woolsie wit and a cheverill conscience was A per 
 se A.' Referring to this or a similar expression, 
 Nash, in ' Pierce Pennilesse,' wrote : ' A per se 
 A. Passion of God ! how came I by that name ? 
 My Godfather Gabriel gave it me, and I must not 
 refuse it.' 
 
 The name was originally given by Harvey to 
 Bacon in the complimentary verses published in 
 the ' Three Letters/ Harvey-Immerito, in 1580. I 
 quote the line : 
 
 ' Every one A per se A his terras and braveries in print. 1 
 
 Thus, the Harvey testimony very materially 
 supports my view as to the true authorship of the 
 ' Lyly ' works. 
 
 Mr. Crawford, in the second volume of his 
 ' Collectanea,' at p. 141, writing ironically about 
 the ' Pappe with an Hatchet ' tract, states^: 
 1 Because the tract repeats over and over again 
 the pet phrases and proverbs of John Lyly, and 
 because its general style bears more than a passing 
 
 22
 
 20 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 resemblance to that author's, critics have assigned it 
 to Lyly. Other circumstances seem to lend colour 
 to the correctness of the attribution. But how 
 easily the best men may err ! Things that seem 
 are not the same (see Peele's " Old Wives' Tale"). 
 The real author is Francis Bacon.' Many a true 
 word has been spoken in a jest. Mr. Crawford 
 only provides another instance. For he proceeds 
 to say that a ' comparison of the pamphlet with 
 Bacon's known work will yield evidence in his 
 favour in abundance. For instance, Promus 
 No. 909 (Bacon's "Promus") : " The crowe of the 
 belfry"; and No. 536 reads, "Allow no swallow 
 under thy roof." " Pappe with an Hatchet" 
 dilates on both proverbs/ Again, that ' the tract 
 quotes the Latin sentence, " Discite justitiam 
 moniti et non ternnere divos." This sentence,' 
 writes Mr. Crawford, 'is from the " .ZEneid," vi. 
 620, and Bacon notes it either fully or in part 
 three times in his " Promus," Nos. 58-436 and 
 1092.' Mr. Crawford's comments may be supple- 
 mented by a few other indications of Bacon's 
 authorship of the tract. The author was evidently 
 a lawyer. This is betrayed by such sentences as : 
 ' Beware an action of the case,' ' Draw a con- 
 veyance ' (deed), ' The common pleas at West- 
 minster to take forfeitures/ Here, again, is a
 
 EUPHUES n 21 
 
 thoroughly Baconian sentence : ' So well established, 
 so wisely maintained, and so long prospering.' 
 
 The author of ' Pappe with an Hatchet ' shared 
 Bacon's love of apothegms. For he writes: 
 1 Here is a tit time to squeeze them with an 
 apothegm.' The author also held Bacon and 
 Lyly's attitude towards atheism : ' What atheist 
 more fool than says in his heart, " There is no 
 God." Bacon's essay on Atheism has, 'The 
 Scripture saith, " The foole hath said in his heart 
 there is noe God." : 
 
 Henry Upchear (whoever he was), in verses 
 prefixed to Greene's 'Menaphon' (1589), wrote : 
 
 * Of all the flowers a Lillie one I loved, 
 When labouring beauty brancht itself abroade, 
 But now old age his glorie hath removed, 
 And Greener objects are my eyes ahcade/ 
 
 The date of birth of the * plebeii films,' M.A., is 
 guessed at 1554. He would resent the allegation 
 of old age at thirty-five. 
 
 The verse is quoted to show the association of 
 Lyly and Greene in one compliment. In a chapter 
 on 'Nash,' I endeavour to show how Bacon, writing 
 under that name, discussed his method of mixing 
 * precepts of doctrine with delightful invention.' 
 We find Lyly, as appears by the prologue to 
 1 Campaspe,' when in later years (in or after
 
 22 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 1596) performed by the boy actors at Blackfriars, 
 actuated by the like intention : ' We have mixed 
 mirth with counsel! and description with delight. 
 To the devotees o Stratford-on-A.von I observe 
 that Lyly in ' Campaspe,' like Spenser, Nash, and 
 others, was familiar with the term, ' Shake the 
 speare ' ; while in this association it should be 
 noted that correspondences between passages in 
 ' Euphues ' and others in ' Hamlet ' are frequent. 
 Mr. Rushton has pointed out several, such as the 
 advice of Polonius to his son. I suggest that the 
 man who wrote, ' When he himself might his 
 quietus make with a bare bodkin,' had in mind the 
 passage, 'Asiarchus spoyled himself with his own 
 bodkin ' (' Euphues,' First Part). 
 
 I am disposed to attach slight importance to the 
 transcripts of two undated petitions of Lyly to 
 Queen Elizabeth. They tell nothing inconsistent 
 with Bacon's career as known to us, but we have 
 no evidence that any such petitions were ever 
 presented. They certainly show the Baconian 
 characteristic of perseverance. 
 
 The evidence of Ben Jonson as to the author- 
 ship of the ' Lyly ' works is necessarily slight. 
 True he said of Bacon that he had filled up all 
 numbers and performed that in our tongue which 
 may be compared or preferred either to insolent
 
 'EUPHUES' 23 
 
 Greece or haughty Rome. His allusion to Lyly 
 is in his verse prefixed to the Shakespeare folio, 
 1623: 
 
 4 Thou didst our Lilly outshine, 
 Or sporting Kyd or Marlowe's mighty line.' 
 
 I think Jonson would not have made an un- 
 favourable comparison between ' Shakespeare ' and 
 any real author. It would have been grossly 
 impolite, and as it is not difficult to show that Kyd 
 and Marlowe were other masks for Bacon, the true 
 inference from Jonson's lines is, I submit, that 
 Bacon's dramatic development began as ' Lyly/ 
 improved as ' Kyd ' and ' Marlowe,' and reached 
 its culmination as ' Shakespeare.' 
 
 If my argument as to the Baconian authorship 
 of the ' Lyly ' works can be established, it shows 
 the dramatic craftsman at the beginning of his career. 
 Hard reading and study, methodical note-taking, 
 continuous practice, continuous revision, in- 
 domitable industry from an early age, produced 
 the genius which reached its highest point o ex- 
 pression in ' Shakespeare.' It also demonstrates 
 another interesting fact namely, that in Bacon's 
 old age thoughts registered in his brain during 
 early manhood came again to the surface. 
 
 In his ' Life and Works of Bacon,' Mr. Spedding 
 printed two short poems, which, after careful
 
 24 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 consideration, he accepted as having been written 
 by Bacon towards the close o his life. 
 The first contains the following lines : 
 
 ' The world's a bubble, and the life of man 
 Less than a span? 
 
 The other poem ends : 
 
 * Good thoughts his only friends, his life a well-spent age, 
 The earth his sober inn a quiet pilgrimage.' 1 
 
 As * Euphues ' (First Part), at the age of twenty, 
 Bacon had recorded : * Our life is but a shadow, a 
 warfare, a pilgrimage, a vapor, a bubble,' and that 
 ' David said it is but a span long.'
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 IMMEBITO 
 
 EDMUND SPENSER, a poor scholar of the Merchant 
 Taylors' School, London, was aided with ten 
 shillings by one No well in 1569, to go to Pem- 
 broke Hall, Cambridge, as a sizar, or serving 
 scholar. After seven years' residence he proceeded 
 M.A. in 1576. In July, 1580, he accompanied 
 Lord Grey de Wilton (the Queen's Lord Deputy) 
 to Ireland in the capacity of his clerk or secretary. 
 Spenser was an official in or near Dublin until 
 about June, 1588, when he went to Kilcolman 
 Castle in Munster, having purchased the office of 
 Clerk to the Council of that province. On 
 December 24, 1598, he brought to London from 
 Ireland a dispatch of Sir John ISforris concerning 
 the disturbed state of Munster. On January 16, 
 1598-99 he died. His remains were deposited in 
 Westminster Abbey at the expense of Robert, Earl 
 of Essex, and his hearse (according to Camden)
 
 26 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 was attended by poets, who threw into his tomb 
 mournful elegies and poems with the pens that 
 wrote them. 
 
 On the original gravestone were inscribed two 
 Latin distichs. They have long since disappeared. 
 
 A monument to the memory of Spenser was 
 erected in 1620, at the cost of 40, by Ann Clifford, 
 Countess of Dorset (grandniece of Anne, widow of 
 Ambrose Dudley, Earl of Warwick). The faulty 
 inscription, putting the date of birth as 1510 and 
 o death as 1596, has in modern times been cor- 
 rected. This Countess of Dorset, after the death 
 o her first husband, married the Earl of Mont- 
 gomery, to whom the First Folio Shakespeare was 
 dedicated. 
 
 Spenser's father was a journeyman cloth -maker. 
 Interesting speculations have been made as to the 
 date of Spenser's birth, whom he fell in love with, 
 and whom he married and when. We may regard 
 them as highly ingenious, most probably erroneous, 
 and certainly immaterial. 
 
 Francis Bacon, in the biliteral cipher story, 
 claims that he wrote the poems title-paged to 
 Spenser, who sold him the use of his name. 
 
 The poems and works so title-paged were 
 published over a period from 1590-1598. They 
 comprised :
 
 IMMERITO 27 
 
 PRINTED. 
 
 ' Faerie Queene ' (First Part) - - 1590 
 
 ' Complaintes ' - 1591 
 
 'Daphnaida' - 1591 
 
 'Colin Clout 1 - 1595 
 
 'Amoretti' - 1595 
 
 Four Hymns - 1596 
 
 1 Prothalamion ' - - 1597 
 
 Faerie Queene ' (Second Part) - 1597 
 
 ' Vewe of Ireland ' (prose) - 1598 
 
 In 1580 a short pamphlet, dedicated June 19 of 
 that year, was printed, entitled ' Three Proper 
 Witty Familiar Letters lately passed between two 
 University Men touching the Earthquake in April 
 last and our English Reformed Versifying.' Later 
 in the same year another pamphlet appeared, 
 entitled ' Two other very Commendable Letters of 
 the same Men's Writing, both touching theforesaid 
 Artificial Versifying and certain other particulars 
 more lately delivered unto the Printer/ Both 
 pamphlets were published by H. Bynneman with 
 ' the grace and privilege of the Queen's Majesty.' 
 The letters purport to be correspondence passed 
 between Immerito and G. H. 
 
 G. H. proved to be Gabriel Harvey. Immerito, 
 who in the first letter in the last printed pamphlet, 
 also styled himself ' Edmundus/ has yet to be 
 accurately identified.
 
 28 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 As we have seen, Bacon alleges that he bought 
 the use of Spenser's name. If that be true, he 
 would have been free to insert the Edmundus 
 allusion in the second pamphlet after Spenser had 
 left for Ireland in July, 1580. 
 
 Harvey went to Cambridge before 1569. He 
 was Tutor at Pembroke College in 1573, was 
 Professor of Khetoric before 1577, his lectures 
 being very popular, and he remained at Cambridge 
 for several years afterwards. Spenser we can trace 
 being at Cambridge until he took his M.A. in 1576. 
 As Dr. Fulke, the master of Pembroke College, was 
 also chaplain to the Earl of Leicester, it is probable 
 that Spenser obtained some clerical employment 
 with the Earl in 1577 or 1578. Bacon was at 
 Cambridge from April, 1573, to December, 1575. 
 He thus had early opportunity of knowing Harvey 
 and perhaps Spenser also. 
 
 He left England for France in September, 1576, 
 returning in March, 1578-79. In 1579 Bacon 
 was entered as an ancient at Gray's Inn. 
 
 In the light of the cipher story it is not un- 
 reasonable to find Immerito dating his letters 
 sometimes from Westminster and sometimes from 
 Leicester House. 
 
 Harvey's age in 1579 (to judge by a letter to 
 Dr. Young of April 24, 1573) was twenty-eight.
 
 IMMERITO 29 
 
 Spenser's age cannot be fixed, but if he were 
 sixteen when he went to Cambridge in 1569, he 
 would have been twenty-six in 1579. Francis 
 Bacon was about nineteen. As to his appearance 
 and mental development in 1578, we have the 
 testimony of his miniature painted by Milliard, the 
 Queen's Court limner, with its inscription : ' 1578. 
 Si tabula daretur digna Animum mallem, M.S. 18.' 
 In 1578 Harvey attracted the attention of the Queen 
 and Earl Leicester, and delivered an oration before 
 them at Saffron Walden, his native place. The 
 Earl shortly afterwards arranged to send Harvey 
 to Italy on some business for him. In December, 
 1578, Harvey was probably in London, that being 
 the date of an entry in a book (' Howliglass,' by 
 Copland) which he had lent to Spenser. In 1579 
 Harvey was back at Cambridge, Bacon and 
 Spenser in London. In August, 1580, Spenser 
 landed in Dublin. Granted that young Francis 
 wanted to use another man's name as pseudo- 
 author, I can very well understand his coming to 
 a bargain with the poor clerk who was taking up 
 a permanent situation in Ireland. 
 
 The testimony of the Harvey letters is therefore 
 material in determining whether Immerito was in 
 fact Spenser, or whether the cipher claim can be 
 justified. We are not entirely confined to the
 
 30 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 printed letters, because a manuscript letter-book 
 and diary belonging to Gabriel Harvey exists, and 
 was edited for the Camden Society some years ago 
 by Mr. Scott. That gentleman complained that in 
 the portions containing copies or drafts of letters 
 to Immerito leaves had been torn out. From 
 the Harvey letters we gather that Immerito 
 was : 
 
 1. ' A Hertfordshire gentleman.' 
 
 Francis, as a boy, was frequently resident at 
 St. Albans, Herts. Spenser was a Londoner. 
 
 2. ' Illustrious Anglo-francitalorum.' 
 
 This may point to an Englishman who had 
 spent a considerable period in France. If so, the 
 cap fits Francis Bacon. 
 
 3. Harvey addressed Immerito with much defer- 
 ence and politeness : 
 
 ' Magnifico Signer Benevolo.' 
 
 ' Your delicate Mastershipp. . . . My younge 
 Italianate Seignoir and French Monsieur. . . . Good- 
 natured and worshipful young gentleman. ... I 
 beseech your Benivolenza. . . . Take my leave of 
 your Excellencies feet and betake your gracious 
 Mastershipp. . . . What tho' II Magnifico Segnior 
 Immerito Benivolo hath noted this amongst his 
 politic discourses and matters of state and Govern- 
 ment.'
 
 IMMERITO 31 
 
 This is an attitude consistent with the position 
 of a young nobleman such as Francis Bacon, who 
 at an early age discussed foreign politics. Harvey 
 could not have heen so deferential to a sizar of 
 his college, even to one in the employ of Earl 
 Leicester. 
 
 4. ' So trew a gallant in the Court, so toward a 
 lawyer and so witty a gentleman.' 
 
 ' We are yet to take instructions and advertise- 
 ments at you lawiers and courtiers' hands, that 
 are continually better trayned and more lively 
 experienced therein than we University men are.' 
 
 The suggestion that Immerito was a lawyer and 
 courtier fits Bacon, but does not accord with 
 Spenser, the serving scholar. 
 
 5. * So honest a youth.' 
 
 * Good lord, you a gentleman, a courtier and 
 youth.' 
 
 The respective ages of Harvey and Bacon 
 warrant the term ' youth ' as applied by the former 
 to the latter. Spenser must have been close upon 
 the same age as Harvey. 
 
 6. ' Foolish is all younkerly learning without a 
 certain manly discipline. As if indeed for the poor 
 boys only, and not much more for well-born and 
 noble youth, were suited the strictness of that old 
 system of learning and teaching.'
 
 32 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 The above observation would be appropriate 
 from Harvey to Bacon, but a deprecation of the 
 poor boys would hardly have been made to one 
 like Spenser, who was educated at Cambridge as a 
 poor boy. 
 
 7. ' You suppose us students happy, and think 
 the air preferred that breatheth on these same 
 great learned philosophers and profound clerks. 
 
 . . . Would to God you were one of these men 
 but a sennight.' 
 
 Such an observation, if made to Spenser, who 
 was at college for seven years, is inexplicable. 
 Francis was specially tutored at Trinity College 
 by Whitgift, the Queen's chaplain ; took no 
 degrees, and left at the age of fifteen. 
 
 8. In a Latin letter from Harvey (see Scott) he 
 suggested that Immerito might shortly be sending 
 one of Lord Leicester's, or Earl Warwick's, or 
 Lord Rich's, players to get him to write a ' comedy 
 or interlude for the theatre or some overpainted 
 stage whereat thou and thy lively copesmates in 
 London may laugh.' 
 
 9. On the footing of the truth of the cipher story 
 it is intelligible. The influence of young Francis 
 with the players belonging to his father, the Earl 
 of Leicester, or his uncle, the Earl of Warwick, can 
 be understood.
 
 IMMERITO 33 
 
 10. In another passage Harvey rebuked Immerito 
 for thinking that the first age was the golden age. If 
 Immerito was the son of a journeyman cloth-maker, 
 and had in two years become a lawyer, a gallant at 
 Court, and a witty gentleman, why was he dis- 
 contented and sighing for a bygone period, which 
 he thought had been the golden age ? 
 
 In a draft letter in Harvey's ' Letter Book ' are 
 two references to a certain E. S. of London, Gentle- 
 man. The date of this letter is 10th of , 1579. 
 
 In another draft the date is given as August 1, 
 1580. In the same book Harvey refers to 'a 
 friend of mine that since a certain chance befallen 
 unto him, a secret not to be revealed, calleth 
 himself Immerito.' 
 
 Harvey's draft letter may have been prepared 
 for a third pamphlet never published, but con- 
 sistent with a settled plan to lead the reading 
 public to think that Immerito was Spenser and 
 not Francis Bacon, who, in view of his possible 
 open recognition by the Queen as her son, had 
 good reason for concealing his identity. 
 
 If we turn to Immerito's letters, we find him 
 writing sometimes from the Court at Westminster, 
 sometimes from Leicester House. In that of 
 October 16, 1579, he remarked: 'First I was 
 
 3
 
 34 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 minded for awhile to have intermitted the uttering 
 of my writings leaste by over much cloying of 
 their noble ears I should gather a contempt of 
 myself or else seem rather for gaine and commoditie 
 to doe it.' 
 
 This indicates that his previous as well as his 
 then present writings were intended for the courtiers 
 to read, and that he did not wish to be thought to 
 be trying to get some personal advantage by his 
 writings. This could not have been the line of 
 the poor son of a journeyman cloth-maker. 
 
 Another remark is, ' Your desire to hear of my 
 late being with her Majesty must die in itself.' 
 That the sizar of yesterday should obtain private 
 audience with the Queen of a most exclusive Court 
 is incomprehensible. Even in the Victorian age 
 an ordinary Oxford undergraduate could not, 
 without social offence, appear in public with a 
 ' servitor,' which is the Oxford equivalent for the 
 Cambridge sizar. 
 
 It will be noticed that in the works of Spenser I 
 have not named the ' Shepheard's Kalendar ' of 
 1579-80. I have not done so, as it was not 
 title-paged to him, being evidently published before 
 the use of Spenser's name had been arranged for. 
 It was subsequently included in the ' Spenser ' 
 folio of 1611.
 
 IMMERITO 35 
 
 It is inconsistent with Spenser authorship that 
 after he settled in Ireland a new edition of the 
 * Kalendar ' came in 1581 from a different publisher 
 in smaller type, closer set, and corrected. 
 
 It is not necessary to follow Spenser, the Irish 
 official, very closely. From 1580 to June, 1588 
 (when he purchased the office of Clerk to the 
 Council of Munster, and went to reside at Kilcolman 
 Castle, an estate of over 3,000 acres in that province), 
 he was in Dublin. He followed his occupation of 
 examining and copying documents, and the Irish 
 office has many specimens of his clerical industry, 
 ' vera copia Edmund Spenser.' 
 
 He had not long settled at Kilcolman, when, in 
 October, 1589, litigation ensued at the instance 
 of Lord Roche, a neighbour. This litigation lasted 
 in the Irish Courts from October, 1589, until 
 1594. 
 
 On December 1, 1589, the First Part of the 
 ' Faerie Queene ' was registered in London. It was 
 published in 1590 in the name of Edmund Spenser 
 as author, and had a prefatory letter to Raleigh, 
 dated January 23, 1589-90. Raleigh had been 
 in Ireland in August and September, 1589, and 
 returned in October to his duties as Lord- 
 Lieutenant of Cornwall. From thence Raleigh 
 
 32
 
 36 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 wrote to a friend with the information that he was 
 on terms of confidence and friendship with the 
 Queen. The letter to Raleigh, and sonnets affixed 
 to the ' Faerie Queene ' addressed to Queen Elizabeth 
 and her chief Ministers, as well as to the ladies of 
 her Court, give, as Dr. Grosart remarked, ' touchts 
 declarative of some personal intercourse.' 
 
 There is no evidence that Edmund Spenser, the 
 Irish official, ever crossed the sea to superintend 
 the printing and publication of this magnificent 
 and lengthy poern. I except the testimony, such 
 as it is, of the ' Colin Clout ' poem (1595), to which 
 I will return later. The allegations of the ' Colin 
 Clout ' verses settle nothing. They may be truth 
 or mere bluff. The public records, however, show 
 that a pension of 50, payable half-yearly, every 
 Christmas and Midsummer, was granted on 
 February 25, 1590-91, to Edmund Spenser and 
 his assigns, during his natural life, to be paid 
 i at the office of the Exchequer at Westminster by the 
 hands of our Treasurer and Chamber Jain.' The 
 terms may be inconsistent with it being paid to 
 the grantee while out of England. The Issue Rolls 
 for 1591-98 are missing, so that we cannot tell 
 whether the pension was ever drawn by Spenser 
 until he arrived in this country. 
 
 In January, 1598-99, there is record (the
 
 IMMERITO 37 
 
 only one) of a payment of the pension viz., to 
 Edmund Spenser, by the hand of Thomas Walker, 
 being 25 for the half-year, due at Christmas. 
 
 If Spenser did not cross from Ireland in 1589 
 or 1590, the personal intercourse with the notables 
 named in the affixed sonnets to the ' Faerie Queene ' 
 is hard to understand. Yet perhaps it is harder 
 still to comprehend how much progress he had to 
 make in the way of personal intimacy between 
 October, 1589, and the January following. There 
 is one notable exception. We should have expected 
 Spenser to have known best Sir John Norris, the 
 President of Munster. That warrior spent most of 
 his life in warfare, and practically none at the 
 English Court. Yet the sonnet to him gives no 
 indication of personal intimacy ! 
 
 So far I think the trend of the evidence supports 
 the claim that the concealed poet and courtier, 
 Francis Bacon, wrote the poems attributed to 
 Spenser, and published them in the latter's name. 
 
 The next * Spenser ' publication was a group of 
 minor verses, entitled ' Complain tes,' entered S.R., 
 London, on December 29, 1590, and published the 
 next year. * Spenser ' wrote no dedication, but 
 Ponsonby, the publisher, prefixed an epistle ' The 
 Printer to the Gentle Reader/ arid therein affirmed 
 that the poems had * been dispersed abroad, and
 
 38 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 some of them embezzled and purloined from the 
 poet since his departure over the sea.' This obser- 
 vation is consistent with a departure in 1580. 
 
 The * Complaintes ' comprised the following : 
 
 1. ' The Ruines of Time/ with dedication to 
 Lady Marie, Countess of Pembroke. 
 
 2. ' The Teares of the Muses,' dedicated to Ladie 
 Strange. 
 
 3. ' Virgil's Gnat.' Long since dedicated to the 
 Earl of Leicester, late deceased. 
 
 4. ' Mother Hubbard's Tale/ dedicated to Lady 
 Compton and Mountegle. 
 
 5. ' The Ruines of Rome.' 
 
 6. ' Muioptornas/ dedicated to Ladie Carey. 
 
 7. ' Visions of the World's Vanities.' 
 
 8. ' Visions of Petrarch.' 
 
 Of the above, No. 4 is admittedly a youthful 
 production ; No. 3 was written and dedicated to 
 the Earl of Leicester in his lifetime (i.e., before the 
 autumn of 1588) ; No. 1 was written after the 
 death o Ambrose, Earl of Warwick (February, 
 1590) ; Nos. 2, 7, and 8 are early writings. 
 
 No. 1 concerns itself with a long lament over the 
 old city of Verulam, the site of St. Albans, where 
 Francis, as a boy, was brought up. It also most 
 feelingly mourns the deaths of Sir Philip Sidney ;
 
 IMMERITO 39 
 
 Eobert, Earl of Leicester ; Ambrose, Earl of War- 
 wick ; and Sir Francis Walsingham. 
 
 In ' The Teares of the Muses ' (No. 2) Melpo- 
 mene laments the low state of the stage ; Terpsichore 
 records the greater burden of misery which occurs 
 to anyone who has, previous to misfortune, ' in the 
 lap of soft delight been long time lulled/ It 
 would have been difficult for the prosperous and 
 busy Irish official to have evolved these evidently 
 painful personal sentiments. 
 
 In No. 4 the poet seems to take part in the 
 Martin Marprelate controversy, which in 1588, 
 1589 and 1590 raged in England, though not in 
 Ireland. The poet objected to difference of texts : 
 
 * From whence arrive diversities of sects 
 And hateful heresies of God abhor'd/ 
 
 In the same poem (which, by the by, caused 
 some offence, and had to be withdrawn) there are 
 the lines : 
 
 ' What hell it is in suing long to bide, 
 To lose good days that might be better spent, 
 To waste long nights in pensive discontent, 
 To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow, 
 To feed on hope with fear of sorrow, 
 To have thy Prince's grace yet want his Peeres', 
 To have thy asking, yet wait manie years." 1 
 
 How this can be said to express the feelings of
 
 40 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 the Irish official I fail to comprehend. The poem 
 refers to the sad lot of the suitor at Court. It 
 was, in the opinion of Dr. Grosart, written several 
 years before the date of publication. If Spenser 
 did come to Court in October, 1589, as to which 
 there is no evidence whatever, he did not have to 
 ' wait manic years ' before he had a pension 
 granted him, and in 1586 he was presented 
 with a large Irish estate of 3,000 acres and a 
 castle. 
 
 The most curious dedication is that to the Earl 
 of Leicester in No. 3 : 
 
 ' Wronged, yet not daring to express my paine. 
 To you, great lord, the causer of my care, 
 In cloudie tears I thus complain 
 Unto yourself that only privie are/ 
 
 This agrees with the allegation of the cipher 
 story as to the parentage of young Francis and its 
 non -recognition . 
 
 The next poem ascribed to Spenser namely, 
 ' Colin Clout's Come Home Again ' was dedicated 
 at Kilcolman Castle on December 27, 1591. It was 
 not printed until 1595. ' Daphnaida,' a lament at 
 the death of the daughter of Lady Helena, Marquise 
 of Northampton, was dedicated five days later viz., 
 January 1, 1591-92, at London. Spenser could 
 not have been at both places. The date of the
 
 IMMERITO 41 
 
 dedication in ' Colin Clout ' suggests a slip upon 
 the part of Bacon masking as Spenser. 
 
 The collection of sonnets called ' Amoretti ' 
 was published in 1595 by Ponsonby, who, in his 
 dedication of it to Sir Robert Needham, alleged 
 that the MS. crossed the sea at the same time as 
 Sir Robert, though without his knowledge. The 
 ' Amoretti ' comprise two sonnets, germane to the 
 authorship question. The 33rd mentions 'Lodwick' 
 in a regret that the ' Faerie Queene ' was not 
 finished. This Lodwick was doubtless a dissem- 
 bling reference to Ludovick Bryskett, from whom 
 in 1588 Spenser had taken over the clerkship to 
 the Munster Council. Spenser and Bryskett were 
 far apart in 1595. The other sonnet, the 74th, is 
 interesting as showing that the name of the poet's 
 mother was Elizabeth, which confirms the cipher 
 story as to Bacon's true parentage. 
 
 In 1595 the ' Colin Clout ' was published. It is 
 the only authority for the suggestion that Spenser 
 came from Ireland in 1589, and contains lines 
 which have often been quoted in reference to three 
 of the daughters of Sir John Spencer of Althorpe : 
 
 ' The sisters three, 
 The honor of the noble family, 
 Of which I meanest boast myself to be." 1 
 
 These were Lady Compton, Lady Elizabeth
 
 42 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 Carey, and Lady Strange (Countess of Derby). 
 The latter was at the date of publication a widow, 
 having not then married for her second husband 
 Sir Thomas Egerton, a particular friend of Francis 
 Bacon. 
 
 As to what was meant by ' boasting/ reference 
 should be made to Book V., Canto 3, of the ; Faerie 
 Queene,' dealing with Braggadocio, the boaster. 
 Spenser, the Irish official, would hardly have dared 
 to boast of a relationship with the Court ladies in 
 question. 
 
 On January 20, 1595-96 the Second Part of the 
 ' Faerie Queene ' was published, and consisted of 
 three more books, illustrating Justice, Friendship, 
 and Courtesy. James VI. of Scotland took strong 
 exception to the book on Justice, complaining to 
 the English Ambassador that it was unfair to the 
 memory of his mother, Mary, Queen of Scots, and 
 suggested that the author should be tried and 
 punished. 
 
 There is no evidence whatever that Spenser 
 came to London to superintend the publication of 
 the Second Part of the ' Faerie Queene.' 
 
 Later in the year namely, on September 1, 1596 
 
 poems entitled ' Four Hymns ' were dedicated 
 
 from Greenwich Palace, where the Queen was in 
 
 residence with her Court. The dedication is to
 
 IMMERITO 43 
 
 Margaret, Countess of Cumberland, and her sister 
 the Countess of Warwick (widow of Ambrose 
 Dudley), a ' service in lieu of the great graces and 
 honorable favours which ye daily show unto me.' 
 These ladies must have known the true author. 
 One, according to the cipher story, was aunt to 
 Francis, and a brother of both had married a niece 
 of Lady Anne Bacon. The letters of that lady 
 .show that Francis Bacon and his foster-brother 
 Anthony were on very friendly terms with Lady 
 Warwick. 
 
 On November 8, 1596, two daughters of the 
 Earl of Worcester were married from Essex House, 
 where Robert, Earl of Essex, and Anthony Bacon 
 were then resident. For the occasion a protha- 
 lamium was written, and in 1597 published as a 
 1 Spenser ' poem. 
 
 In 1596 ' The Vewe of Ireland ' was written and 
 circulated in MS., though not printed until 1633. 
 The best MS. is at the Lambeth Palace. Another 
 was found in Archbishop Ussher's library in 
 Dublin. Sir James Ware, who printed it, com- 
 plains of its want of moderation, and the vague- 
 ness o the author's historical knowledge. 
 
 Spenser was at Cambridge in 1576, and there is 
 no evidence of his going to Ireland before July, 
 1580. Was the statement that he was at the
 
 44 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 hanging of O'Brien (in July, 1577) a blunder of 
 the real writer ? 
 
 The ' Yewe ' has characteristics of the political 
 summaries which Francis Bacon was in the habit 
 of writing for the information of the Queen and 
 her Ministers. It may have been worked up from 
 the Irish collection alluded to in the letter of 
 Francis to Anthony Bacon of January 25, 1594-95. 
 The pamphlet is said to have been founded on 
 the works of Buchanan and Camden. In 1596 
 Francis and Essex were in close confidence with 
 the Queen and doing the Foreign Office work. 
 The ' Note of Suggested Remedies ' issued about 
 1598-99 was doubtless also the work of Francis, 
 though in the handwriting of Dudley Carlton, then 
 a young man training in London for Foreign 
 Office service. 
 
 In 1603, just after the death of the Queen, 
 Bacon's friend, Sir John Davis, went to Scotland 
 to meet the Scottish King, then on his way to 
 assume the English throne. Bacon wrote to Davis 
 concerning his journey and asking him ' to be 
 kind to concealed poets.' It was very evident 
 that King James must not get to know that the 
 real author of the ' Justice ' cantos of ' Faerie 
 Queene ' (Second Part) was Bacon, or trouble was 
 in store for him. In 1606 Bacon was canvassing
 
 IMMERITO 45 
 
 very hard for a salaried position under the Crown. 
 In the same year the translation by Ludovic 
 Bryskett of an Italian book entitled ' Discourse of 
 Civil Life ' was prefaced by an irrelevant account 
 of a ' conversation ' alleged to have taken place 
 between the deceased Spenser and others at an 
 obscure cottage near Dublin. Bryskett was partly 
 Italian by race, and had accompanied young Philip 
 Sidney on his continental journeys from 1572 to 
 1575. His reward was evidently the gift from 
 Sidney's father, then Lord-Deputy of Ireland, of 
 the clerkship to the Council at Munster. In 1588 
 Bryskett sold the office to Spenser. In 1600 he 
 was stranded in London, and at his intervention 
 Lord Robert Cecil wrote to Sir George Carew in 
 Ireland to ask for employment for him there. 
 The probability is that he did not get employment 
 in Ireland, but that work was found for him in 
 London in translating Italian books. 
 
 If Bacon wanted to still further mystify King 
 James, and cause him to continue to think that 
 the objectionable author of the ' Duessa ' cantos of 
 the ' Faerie Queene ' was an Irish official who died 
 in 1598-99, here was opportunity which seems to 
 have been taken advantage of. 
 
 Bryskett's book was dedicated to Lord Grey of 
 Wilton, then dead. Of the persons stated to have
 
 46 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 been present with Bryskett at the reported con- 
 versation in the obscure cottage near Dublin, 
 Spenser, Warham St. Leger, Sir Robert Dillon, 
 Sir Thomas Norreys, Captain Carleil, and another, 
 were dead. The ' conversation,' moreover, is 
 recorded after an interval of over twenty years 
 with all the exactitude of an official shorthand 
 report. Whether this bluff was really needed or 
 was merely ex abund&nti cautela, will, perhaps, 
 never be known. King James, however, appointed 
 Bacon to be his Solicitor-General, the first office 
 of real value he had attained. 
 
 I have now concluded a general survey of the 
 evidence, and submit that it lends much confirma- 
 tion of the cipher story allegation that Francis 
 Bacon, under protection of the name of ' Spenser,' 
 wrote the poems and works attributed to the latter. 
 Whether Spenser was brought over from Ireland 
 by Raleigh in October, 1589, to assist in the 
 illusion as to his authorship, or never came at all, 
 cannot be ascertained with any finality. In the 
 preface to 'The Ruines of Time' (1591) the follow- 
 ing words are used : 
 
 * Yet sithence my late cumming into England.' 
 
 So that it is possible that the ' little man wore 
 short haire, little bands, and little cuffes,' as Aubrey
 
 IMMERITO 47 
 
 described him, did put in an appearance. On the 
 other hand, some such dissembling was needed to 
 account for and make passable the affectionate 
 allusions in the poem to the then recent deaths of 
 Earl Warwick and Sir Francis Walsingham, which 
 occurred in February and April, 1590. 
 
 There are a few general considerations which 
 should be taken account of before this chapter is 
 ended. Christopher North, in one of his essays on 
 ' Spenser,' contributed to ' Blackwood's Magazine ' 
 for 1834, wrote : ' Thus sings the philosophical, 
 pious poet; his hymns and odes on Nature, and 
 Nature's God, and the tongues of men, are as 
 of angels.' In the dramas and poems of the 
 philosopher-poet ' Shakespeare,' Spenser was never 
 mentioned. In the essays and scientific, legal, 
 and political writings of Bacon the philosopher 
 and poet (as many critics describe him), neither 
 Spenser nor Shakespeare were mentioned. 
 
 In the philosophical poems and dramas, no 
 less than the more strictly philosophical writings, 
 there is evinced a dominating desire to instruct. 
 Ignorance was abhorred : 
 
 ' But hell and darkness and the grisly grave 
 Is ignorance, the enemy of grace. 1 
 
 Neither Spenser nor Shakespeare left books,
 
 48 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 manuscripts, nor letters. The presses and boxes 
 of Bacon's manuscripts and letters were full to 
 overflowing, and their contents went through 
 much mysterious sifting, dispersal, and selection 
 for printing. 
 
 Spenser's genius, commented the Rev. D. Hub- 
 bard, was aristocratic in its preferences. So was 
 the genius of ' Shakespeare ' and that of Francis 
 Bacon. Spenser's mind comprehended many sub- 
 jects afterwards dealt with by either ' Shakespeare ' 
 or Bacon. For instance, he deals with Locrine, 
 King Lear, Cymbeline, Venus and Adonis, Anthony 
 and Cleopatra, Caesar, Edward II., Henry VII. , 
 and Richard III. Spenser, like ' Shakespeare,' 
 drew largely upon Holin^shed's Chronicles. To 
 this or a similar source must be traced the infor- 
 mation about the Irish river system worked into 
 Book IV., Canto 11, of the 'Faerie Queene.' 
 
 When Francis proceeded to describe the neigh- 
 bourhood of Kilcolman Castle, he made up for the 
 shortcomings of a small-sized map by the free 
 exercise of an extensive poetic imagination. 
 Dr. Grosart, a learned editor of ' Spenser,' visited 
 the district of Kilcolman, and reported that the 
 fields and hills were commonplace and un- 
 picturesque. The ' Mulla ' was five miles distant. 
 Its correct name was Awbeg. There was no
 
 IMMERITO 49 
 
 mountain of Mole, but some hills called Bally ho wra 
 were to be found about five miles in another 
 direction. For the river ' Allo ' we were to read 
 Black water ; for Arlo Hill to read Harlow, a fast- 
 ness in the Galtee Mountains, frequently alluded 
 to in contemporary State records. 
 
 Take another point. The writer of the poems 
 and prose ascribed to Spenser showed not only 
 legal attainments, but an absolute mastery of 
 English jurisprudence. The * Faerie Queene ' is 
 saturated with law (see Book I., Canto 2 ; 
 Book III, Canto 1 ; Book V., Canto 4 ; Book VI., 
 Cantos 4 and 7; and Book VII., Canto 7) ; so are 
 the ' Vewe of Ireland ' and the ' Note of Suggested 
 Remedies.' To mention one instance only : 
 Fraudulent conveyances were the subject of special 
 legislation in England in 1585. The following 
 would be written between 1596 and 1598 : ' That 
 provision may be made for the avoiding of such 
 fraudulent conveyances made only to defeat Her 
 Majesty of the benefit of their attainders.' Spenser 
 was never trained as a lawyer, and never filled any 
 appointment requiring a general knowledge of law. 
 Having regard to the way Lord Burleigh was 
 supporting Sir John Perrot, the ' Vewe of Ireland ' 
 would seem to have been an attempt to gently 
 induce the Queen to take a different course, a 
 
 4
 
 50 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 method of peaceable invasion and persuasion which 
 Bacon strongly believed in. 
 
 The parallelisms between ' Spenser' and 'Shake- 
 speare ' are almost unlimited. Below I print a 
 few. I first mention one which, when I came upon 
 it in the Glosse for May, ' Shepheard's Kalendar,' I 
 turned to the 'Shakespeare ' play of ' Richard III./ 
 expecting the incident would be there repeated, 
 and so it was : 
 
 SPENSER. ' The goats stumbling is here noted as an evil 
 sign. The like to be marked in all histories, and that not 
 the least of the Lord Hastings in "King Richard the 
 Third, his Days." For it is said that in the morning, 
 riding towards the Tower of London, there to sit upon 
 matters on counsel, his horse stumbled twice or thrice by 
 the way. 1 
 
 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 ' Hastings. Three times to-day my foot-cloth horse did 
 
 stumble, 
 
 And started when he looked upon [the Tower, 
 As loth to bear me to the slaughter-house.' 
 
 SPENSER ' To be wise and eke to love 
 
 Is granted scarce to God above. 1 
 
 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 ' Or else you love not ; for to be wise and love 
 Exceeds man's might ; that dwells with God above." 
 
 SPENSER 
 
 ' In deep discovery of the mind's disease 
 . . . Then with some cordials seek first to appease 
 The inward languor of my wounded heart.'
 
 IMMERITO 51 
 
 SHAKESPEARE * Canst thou minister to a mind diseased ?' 
 
 SPENSER ' Of this world's theatre in which we stay 
 My love, like the spectator, idly sits.' 
 
 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 * As in a theatre the eyes of men, 
 After some well-graced actor leaves the stage, 
 Are idly bent on him who enters next.' 
 
 SPENSER. The fall of Lucifer as the result of ambition 
 is described in ' Hymn of Heavenly Love.' 
 
 SHAKESPEARE ' And when he falls he falls like Lucifer.' 
 
 SPENSER ' The evil done 
 
 Dyes not when breath the body first doth leave. 
 But from the grandsire to the nephew's son 
 And all his seed, the curse doth often cleave.' 
 
 SHAKESPEARE ' The evil that men do lives after them.' 
 
 SPENSER. In Book II., Canto 9, we have the reference 
 to the porter at] the gate, and his larum bell. Later on 
 we have the term ' hurly burly/ 
 
 SHAKESPEARE. Compare * Macbeth.' 
 SPENSER 
 
 ' When gentle sleep his heavy eyes would close, 
 . . . Upon his'heavy eyelids.' 
 
 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 ' Sleep, gentlejsleep, why hast thou slighted me, 
 That thou no more my heavy eyelids close ?' 
 
 SPENSER * And steal away the crown of their good name.' 
 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 ' But he who filches from me my good name.' 
 SPENSER 
 
 ' Thou hast with borrowed plumes thyself endued.' 
 
 42
 
 52 EUPHUES THE PERIPATJCIAN 
 
 SH A KESPEARE 
 
 ' His feathers are but borrowed. 1 
 4 Sits mocking in our plumes.' 
 
 SPENSER ' To pity him that list to play the fool. 1 
 SHAKESPEARE ' It takes a wise man to play the fool.' 
 SPENSER ' In seas of trouble and of toilsome pain.' 
 SHAKESPEARE ' Or to take arms against a sea of troubles.' 
 
 SPENSER. ' That even those which did backbite him are 
 choked with their own venom, and break their galls to 
 hear his honourable report. 1 
 
 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 By the Gods, 
 
 Ye shall digest the venom of your spleen, 
 Though it do split you. 1 
 
 SPENSER 
 
 ' On whose mighty shoulders most dost rest 
 The burden of this kingdom's government. 1 
 
 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 * And from these shoulders, these ruined pillars, 
 Out of pity taken, a load would sink a navy. 
 Oh ! 'tis a burden. 1 
 
 I could undertake to find in Bacon's acknow- 
 ledged works parallels of three-fourths of the fore- 
 going (vide Reed's ' Parallelisms,' also the various 
 works of Wigston, Donnelly, Bayley, and Theobald). 
 
 Many other Shakespeare-Spenser parallels are 
 given in Mr. Rushton's book, ' Shakespeare Illus- 
 trated.' They are less likely to be the cribbings 
 by one writer from another than the reutilization
 
 IMMERITO 53 
 
 by the same author of his own ideas and illustra- 
 tions. Bacon was constantly repeating himself in 
 his acknowledged works. 
 
 Has it ever occurred to the editors of ' Spenser ' 
 how highly impracticable it must have been to 
 pass works through the press in the absence of an 
 author abroad ? If Bacon's claim to authorship 
 were conceded, the difficulty is removed. In 1609 
 the ' Faerie Queene ' was corrected for a folio 
 edition, with the addition of two entirely new 
 cantos, perhaps the finest of the whole set. The 
 printers incorporate them with the observation, 
 ' which both for Forme and Matter appear to be 
 parcel of some following Booke of the Faery 
 Queene.' Why did the printers purport to rely 
 upon internal evidence only ? Spenser's children 
 were living, and could have been referred to and 
 vouched, had their dead father been the true author. 
 
 In 1611 a corrected folio edition of the 'Spenser' 
 poems was published. Who was the obscure yet 
 talented literary man, responsible for the correc- 
 tions ? Abraham Lincoln once made some per- 
 tinent remarks as to the impossibility of fooling 
 all the people all the time. Bacon did his fooling 
 so cleverly that very few of the people of the 'next 
 ages ' care to be undeceived. Still, in the interests of 
 historical accuracy an attempt is worth the while.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE RED-NOSED MINISTER 
 
 NOVELS and light literature published as from the 
 pen of one Robert Greene occupied the attention 
 of the Elizabethan reading public from 1580 to 
 1600. Yet practically nothing is known about 
 him. 
 
 The dates and places of his birth, marriage, 
 death, and burial are not known. 
 
 There is no evidence as to who were his parents, 
 his wife, or child, nor where he was educated. A 
 suggestion which may yet be verified from college 
 records is that a certain Robert Greene entered 
 St. John's College, Cambridge, on November 26, 
 1575, as a serving scholar, and proceeded B.A., 
 1578-79. But no college record has yet been 
 vouched to show that he graduated M.A. at Clare 
 Hall in 1583. A tale entitled Mamillia,' Second 
 Part, was entered S.R. on September 6, 1583, but 
 was not published until 1593, a date later than 
 
 54
 
 THE RED-NOSED MINISTER 55 
 
 Greene's alleged death. This work is dedicated 
 ' from my studie in Clare Hall. By Robert 
 Greene, Maister of Artes in Cambridge.' Yet 
 'Mamillia,' First Part, entered S.R. October 3,1580, 
 was printed 1583, as by Robert Greene, Graduate 
 in Cambridge. 
 
 Greene may have taken his M.A., and may have 
 been at Clare Hall, but sufficient proof is not yet 
 forthcoming. 
 
 According to the biliteral cipher story of 
 Francis Bacon, Greene was one of Bacon's literary 
 screens or masks. This is what he says : 
 
 ' Several small works under no name won 
 worthy praise. Next in Spenser's name also they 
 ventured into an unknown world. When I at 
 length having written in divers stiles, found three 
 who for sufficient reward in gold, added to an 
 immediate renowne as good pens willingly put 
 forth all workes which I had composed, I was 
 bolder. ' Deciphered from ' Novum Organum,' 1620. 
 
 ' Spenser, Greene, Peele, Marlowe have sold me 
 theirs.' Deciphered from Jonson's Works, Folio, 
 1616. 
 
 It is the fashion to decry the alleged cipher and 
 its story. Those who have the moral courage to 
 accept the cipher for a moment, if only as a work- 
 ing hypothesis, may be disposed to follow this
 
 56 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 chapter to its end, and I promise they will be 
 interested. 
 
 The cipher allegation is consistent with Greene, 
 1 the putter forth/ having been the serving scholar 
 of St. John's, who drifted from Cambridge to 
 London in search of employment, and he may even 
 have taken Holy Orders. Computing the age of 
 the young serving scholar as fourteen when he 
 entered St. John's, Cambridge, he would, in 1583, 
 when he came to London, be about the same age 
 as young Bacon. Harvey states (' Four Letters ') 
 that Greene died under the age of twenty-nine. 
 
 Bacon had, I think, already published ' Euphues ' 
 (1579), in the pen-name of Lyly, and ' Shepheard's 
 Kalendar' (1580) in the name of Immerito. But 
 the ' Mirror of Modesty ' entered S.R. in April, 
 1579, and 'Mamillia,' First Part, entered S.R. 1580, 
 seem to have been kept back from the printer until 
 1583 and the next year, when Greene became 
 available and willing to act as sponsor. The 
 suggestion that the ' Mirror of Modesty ' and 
 ' Mamillia,' First Part, were written by Greene at 
 Cambridge does not accord with the sort of con- 
 fession entitled ' The Repentance of Robert Greene,' 
 printed in 1592, in which it is stated that he left 
 Cambridge and spent a long time on the Continent, 
 then returned, * and after I had by degrees pro-
 
 THE RED-NOSED MINISTER 57 
 
 ceeded Maister of Arts I left the University and 
 away to London where ... I became an author 
 of plays and a penner of love pamphlets. 1 
 
 Francis Bacon left Cambridge at the age of 
 fifteen without taking a degree, and the following 
 year went to France under the best conditions 
 possible for experience and study namely, in the 
 jtrain of the English Ambassador. 
 
 M. Jusserand, writing of Greene, states, 'Learned 
 he was, versed in the Greek, Latin, French, and 
 Italian tongues.' So was Francis Bacon. Mr. 
 H. C. Hart, in Notes and Queries, remarked that 
 Greene was a versatile genius. Mr. Spedding 
 claimed this concerning Bacon. ' Proverbial 
 philosophy is unusually rampant in Greene's 
 method,' says Mr. Hart. The same may be said 
 of Bacon's method. 
 
 Greene alludes in his * Vision ' to the importance 
 of men of first-class abilities using them in per- 
 suading men to honest and honourable actions. 
 Bacon in his references to the Orpheus legend 
 urges a similar line of conduct. 
 
 We find Greene, like Bacon, continually utilizing 
 and incorporating the work of other men. Bacon 
 admitted that he lit his torch at every man's candle. 
 
 Tieck, the German critic, thought some of 
 Greene's lines the work of the youthful Shake-
 
 58 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 speare. Storenjoko, the Russian critic, was struck 
 with the astounding resemblance between Greene's 
 'Philomela' and Shakespeare's 'Imogen.' Pro- 
 fessor Brown affirmed that in style Greene was the 
 father of Shakespeare. 
 
 Mr. White assigned to Greene the authorship of 
 ' Love's Labour Lost ' and ' Comedy of Errors.' 
 Gabriel Harvey, his clever contemporary, accused 
 Greene of being the ape of Euphues. Harvey, in 
 1589, wrote of Euphues as ' young Euphues,' when 
 the first work of that name was printed in 1579. 
 At that time Francis would be nineteen. Harvey, 
 writing to Immerito in 1580, refers to him as 
 ' so honest a youth in the city, so true a gallant 
 in the Court, so toward a lawyer and so witty a 
 gentleman/ 
 
 It is to be noticed that the writer of the works 
 ascribed to Greene was a lawyer also. 
 
 If Bacon was the writer there is no incongruity. 
 
 Here are some instances of legal phraseology : 
 
 * Mark the words, tis a lease parol to have and 
 to hold.' ' Looking Glass for England.' 
 
 * This lease this manor or this patent sealed.' 
 ' James IV.' 
 
 ' I have left thee by my last Will and Testament 
 only heir and sole executor of all my lands and 
 moveables yet with this proviso.' ' Mamillia,' 
 Second Part.
 
 THE RED-NOSED MINISTER 59 
 
 ' Neither is the defendant overthrown at the first 
 plea of the plaintiff.' ' Mamillia,' Second Part. 
 
 According to the so-called 'Repentance' and other 
 confessional works in Greene's name, Greene makes 
 himself out to have been a licentious vagabond, and 
 writes an elaborate apology for his life, urging 
 others to take warning from his example, and 
 improve their own conduct. I quote the words, 
 putting in italics a few which seem equivocal : 
 
 'But however my life hath beene let my re- 
 pentant end be a generall example to all the youth 
 in England to obey their parentes to flic whore- 
 dome drunkenness swearing blaspheming contempt 
 of the word and such grevous and grosse sinnes 
 least they bring their parents' heads with sorrow 
 to their graves and leaste (with mee) they be a 
 blemish to their kindred and to their posteritie for 
 ever.' 
 
 Yet, when we examine the few contemporary 
 descriptions of Greene, we find the witnesses as re- 
 spectfully complimentary of him as Gabriel Harvey, 
 the brilliant young Cambridge Lecturer, was of 
 Immerito (' Two Letters of Notable Contents '). 
 
 This is what Chettle said (' Kind Hearts Dream/ 
 1592) : 
 
 ' A man of indifferent yeares, of face amiable, of 
 body well proportioned, his attire after the habit
 
 60 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 of a scholar-like gentleman only his hair was some- 
 what long.' 
 
 In Greene's ' Funeralls ' (1594), R. B. says : 
 
 ' Greene pleased the eies of all that lookt upon him.' 
 
 ***** 
 'For judgment Jove for learning deepe he still Apollo 
 
 seemde 
 
 For fluent tongue for eloquence, men Mercury him deemde 
 For curtesie suppose him Guy or Guyons somewhat lesse 
 His life and manners though I would I cannot halfe 
 
 expresse 
 
 Nor mouth nor mind nor Muse can halfe declare 
 His life his love his laude so excellent they were. 1 
 
 Other things being equal, these encomiums 
 would accord with a fair description of young 
 Francis Bacon. 
 
 What Harvey said to the contrary was only 
 part of the collaborated joking in which Harvey 
 took a full share. Harvey pretended that he was 
 1 altogether unacquainted with the man. 1 
 
 In the Martin Mar-Sixtus pamphlet, printed 
 1592, Greene is referred to as the ' red-nosed 
 minister.' This clever pamphlet was probably the 
 work of Sir Walter Raleigh, of whose capacity as 
 an author the writer of the ' Arte of English Poesie' 
 (1589) speaks cordially. Raleigh may either not 
 have known that Robert the parson was merely a 
 mask for Bacon's work, and, therefore, abused the 
 assumed writer ; or I suspect that, as a member of
 
 THE RED-NOSED MINISTER 61 
 
 the Court circle, he knew very well Bacon's 
 position in the matter, and joined in the pamphlet 
 warfare for amusement. 
 
 There is slight further proof that Greene, the 
 mask, had been a minister, in some MS. notes 
 written on the title-page of a 1599 print of the 
 ' Pinner of Wakefield,' viz. : ' Written by ... a 
 minister who acted the pinner's part in it himself. 
 Teste W. Shakespeare. Ed. Juby saith it was 
 made by Ro Greene.' Mr. Fleay is disposed to 
 identify Greene with ' Robert the parson,' one of 
 the players in the Earl of Leicester's company. 
 These actors were in Germany in 1586, and if the 
 mask was away, the fact that in 1586 nothing was 
 printed in the name of Greene is probably thus 
 accounted for. It is possible the real Robert 
 Greene died about 1590-91. Stowe records the 
 burial of a man of that name on November 14, 
 1590, at St. Botolfs, Aldersgate. That Francis 
 Bacon appears to have decided about 1591-92 to 
 drop light literature, and let his ' Greene ' shade 
 die most dramatically in the public eye, has some 
 support from his letter to Burleigh, which Mr. 
 Spedding ascribes to this date. 
 
 To quote from this letter : 
 
 ' Lastly I confess that I have as vast contempla- 
 tive ends as I have moderate civil ends, for I have
 
 62 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 taken all knowledge to be my province ; and if I 
 could purge it of two sorts of rovers, whereof the 
 one with frivolous disputations confutations and 
 auricular traditions and impostures, hath com- 
 mitted so many spoils, I hope I should bring in 
 industrious observations grounded conclusions and 
 profitable inventions and discoveries ; the best 
 state of that province. This whether it be curiosity 
 or vain glory, or nature or (if one take it favour- 
 ably) philantrophia is so fixed in my mind as it 
 cannot be removed. And I do easily see that place 
 of any reasonable countenance doth bring com- 
 mandment of more wits than of a mans own which 
 is the thing I greatly affect. . . . And if your 
 Lordship cannot carry me on, I will not do as 
 Anaxagoras did, who reduced himself with con- 
 templation unto voluntary poverty ; but this I will 
 do : I will sell the inheritance that I have and 
 purchase some lease of quick revenue, or some 
 office of gain that shall be executed by deputy and 
 so give over all care of service, and become some 
 sorry book-maker or a true pioneer in that mine of 
 truth which (he said) lay so deep.' 
 
 This piece of autobiography was followed up in 
 September of the same year with a pamphlet 
 entitled ' Greene's Vision,' which gives us further 
 insight into his state of mind, already much dis- 
 turbed by the Plague then raging in London. 
 
 In the ' Vision ' he proceeds to tell how in a dis-
 
 THE RED-NOSED MINISTER 63 
 
 contented humour ' I sat me down upon my bed- 
 side and began to cal to remembrance what fond 
 and wanton lines had past my pen, how I had bent 
 my course to a wrong shore, as beating my brains 
 about such vanities as were little profitable, sowing 
 my seed in the sand and so reaping nothing but 
 thornes and thistles.' 
 
 He then prints an ' Ode of the Vanity of Wanton 
 Writings.' 
 
 Proceeding, he writes : 
 
 ' After I had written this Ode a deeper insight 
 of my follies did pearce into the center of my 
 thoughtes, that I felt a passionate remorse, dis- 
 covering such perticuler vanities as I had soothed 
 up with all my forepassed humors, I began 
 to consider that that Astrea, that virtue, that 
 metaphisicall influence which maketh one man 
 differ from an other in excellence being I meane 
 come from the heavens, and was a thing infused 
 into man from God, the abuse whereof I found to 
 be as prejudicial as the right user thereof was 
 profitable, that it ought to be employed to wit, not 
 in setting out a goddesse but in setting out the 
 praises of God ; not in discovering of beauty but 
 in discovering of vertues ; not in laying out the 
 platformes of love, nor in telling the deepe passions 
 of fancy but in persuading men to honest and - 
 honorable actions which are the steps that lead to 
 
 ~
 
 64 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 the true and perfect felicity : . . . These premises 
 dr.'.ve me into a maze especially when I considered 
 . that wee were borne to profit our country not only 
 to pleasure ourselves : then the discommodities 
 that grew from my vaine pamphlets, began to 
 muster in my sight : then I cald to minde how 
 many idle fancies I had made to passe the Presse, 
 how I had pestered gentlemen's eyes and mindes 
 with the infection of many fond passions rather 
 infecting them with the allurements of some 
 inchanted Aconiton than tempered their thought 
 with any honest Antidote. . . .' 
 
 Then follows a very beautiful prayer concluding 
 4 and so shadow me with the wings of thy grace, 
 that my minde being free from all sinfull cogita- 
 tions I may for ever keepe my sou 1 an undefiled 
 member of thy church, and in faith love feare 
 humblenesse of heart, prayer and dutiful obedience 
 shew myself regenerate and a reformed man from 
 my former follies.' 
 
 ' Greene ' next proceeds to describe a vision of a 
 visit from the poets Chaucer and Gower. These 
 poets discuss the merits of Greene's work, and 
 after certain quotations, 'How saiest thou Gower 
 quoth Chaucer to these sentences ? are they not 
 worthie grave eares and necessary for younge 
 mindes ? is there no profit in these principles ; is 
 there not flowers amongst weedes and siveet aphor- 
 
 **V*jt,rf / .: fri-fr' 
 
 /&* '*"
 
 THE RED-NOSED MINISTER 65 
 
 isms hidden amongst effeminate amours f Are not 
 these worthie to eternize a mans fame and to make 
 the memorial of him lasting ?' After the introduc- 
 tion of one or two tales, Gower makes a speech, in 
 the course of which he says : 
 
 4 Then Green give thyself to write either of 
 humanity and as Tullie did set down thy minde 
 de officiis, or els of Morall virtue and so be a 
 profitable instructor of manners : doe as the 
 Philosophers did, seeke to bring youth to virtue 
 with setting down Axiomes of good living and 
 doe not persuade young gentlemen to folly by the 
 acquainting themselves with thy idle workes. I 
 tell thee bookes are companions and friends and 
 coun sailors, and therefore ought to bee civill 
 honest and discreet least they corrupt with false 
 doctrine rude manners and vicious living : Or els 
 penne something of natural philosophic. Dive 
 down into the Aphorismes of the Philosophers 
 and see what nature hath done and with thy pen 
 paint that out to the world : let them see in the 
 creatures the mightinesse of the Creator, so shalt 
 thou reape report worthy of memorie.' 
 
 Next follows a vision of Solomon, who counsels 
 the study of Divinity the true wisdom. 
 
 Greene winds up the pamphlet with the remark 
 that he found he had been in a dream : 
 
 'Yet gentlemen when I entered into the considera- 
 
 5
 
 66 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 tion of the vision and called to minde not only the 
 counsaile of Gower, but the persuasions of Solomon : 
 a sudaine feare tainted every limme and I felt a 
 horror in my conscience for the follyes of my 
 Penne : whereupon as in my dreame, so awoke, 
 I resolved peremptorilie to leave all thoughts of 
 love and to apply my wits as neere as I could to 
 seeke after wisdome so highly commended by 
 Solomon.' 
 
 Thus in the cases of Bacon and ' Greene ' the 
 year 1592 sees them both embarked upon 'vast 
 contemplative ends.' 
 
 In working out Bacon's resolve to bury himself 
 as Greene, Harvey collaborated. The fictitious 
 autobiography and the pamphleteering arising out 
 of the ' death ' of the pseudo-Greene, are, I think, 
 the most amusing incidents in Elizabethan litera- 
 ture. From the autobiography and the pamphlets 
 modern biographers and editors have evolved what 
 they honestly supposed to have been correct details 
 of Greene's life. How otherwise could they have 
 passed by the obvious jest in the ' Groatsworth of 
 Wit' (1592), in which the supposed dying father 
 remarks of his son : ' he is still Greene, and may 
 grow straight.' They have also allowed themselves 
 to be imposed upon by Harvey, who stated (' Four 
 Letters ') that Greene had a bastard son, ' Infortu-
 
 THE RED-NOSED MINISTER 67 
 
 natus Greene ' (why Greene ?). This surely was 
 only a jibe by Harvey at Francis Bacon's fondness 
 (in writing in the name of Greene) of the word 
 1 infortunate ' (see examples in Notes and Queries, 
 by Mr. Hart, 1905, page 81). 
 
 Mr. J. P. Collier, always ready to go one better, 
 professed to have found the following entry in the 
 Parish Registry of St. Leonard's, Shoreditch, under 
 date August 11, 1593 : 
 
 ' Fortunatus Green was buried the same day.' 
 
 This is likely to be another of Mr. Collier's 
 forgeries and also one of his mistakes, as the name 
 is not correct. 
 
 Gabriel Harvey is responsible for further mys- 
 tification. According to the ' Repentance,' the 
 following letter was written by Greene on his 
 death-bed : 
 
 ' Sweet wife as ever there was any goodwill or 
 friendship between thee and mee see this bearer 
 (my host) satisfied of his debt : I owe him tenne 
 pound and but for him I had perished in the 
 streetes. Forget and forgive my wrongs done unto 
 thee and Almighty-God have mercie on my soule. 
 
 'Farewell till we meet in heaven for on earth 
 thou shalt never see me more. 
 
 'This 2 of September. 
 
 1 Written by thy dying husband. Robert Greene? 
 
 52
 
 68 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 Harvey, in his ' Four Letters,' states that he 
 saw the hostess of the dying Greene, before 
 September 8, and that Greene had given his host 
 a bond for ten pounds, on which was written the 
 following letter : 
 
 ' Doll I charge thee by the love of our youth 
 and by my soules rest that thou wilte see this man 
 paid : for if he and his wife had not succoured me 
 I had died in the streetes. Robert Greene.' 
 
 There could hardly have been two letters, so 
 that the Harvey- Immerito combination in this 
 instance did not collaborate very well. 
 
 The Earl of Leicester died early in 1588, and 
 was succeeded in the Chancellorship at Oxford by 
 Sir Christopher Hatton. In Wood's ' Fasti,' follow- 
 ing an account of this succession, are two rather 
 significant entries. The first states that in April 
 of that year Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, was 
 incorporated M.A., being accounted one of the 
 best poets amongst the nobility of England. The 
 next is, that Robert Greene, M.A., of Cambridge, 
 was also then incorporated. 
 
 On the assumption of the cipher story that the 
 young men Francis Bacon and Robert Devereux 
 were brothers, these entries may represent a bit of 
 pleasantry by Hatton, with whom, as his letters 
 show, Francis was on good terms.
 
 THE RED-NOSED MINISTER 69 
 
 At any rate, several works published by Greene 
 subsequent to this date have the reference, 
 'utriusque Academic in artibus Magister.' 
 
 The cipher story that Bacon wrote the works 
 ascribed to Greene and Marlowe receives some 
 probably unintended support from recent articles 
 by Mr. H. C. Hart in Notes and Queries, July, 
 1905, to July, 1906. 
 
 Mr. Hart shows that from Bowes' 1586 transla- 
 tion of Primaudaye's ' French Academy ' Greene's 
 excerpts were ' frequent, and painful, and free.' 
 Primaudaye's chapter on ' Fortune ' is virtually 
 annexed by Greene in ' Tritameron,' Second Part 
 (1587), except one passage. 
 
 Why did ' Greene ' omit this passage ? Mr. Hart 
 finds the excepted passage used in the play of 
 ' Tamburlaine,' afterwards ascribed to * Marlowe/ 
 
 This points very strongly to the use by one 
 writer of different portions of the book for different 
 purposes. Two persons cribbing from one common 
 source would hardly be so particular. 
 
 That 'Greene,' in ' Menaphon,' printed 1589, 
 quotes from Marlowe's ' Tamburlaine,' Second Part, 
 not printed until 1590, rather supports this view. 
 The works of Greene, Bacon, and Shakespeare 
 have much in common, as many critics have noticed. 
 
 I content myself with one illustration as suffi- 

 
 70 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 cient for the limits of my space. For others I 
 refer the reader to Mr. H. Bayley's recent work, 
 ' A Shakespeare Symphony.' 
 
 * Greene,' in ' Mamillia,' Second Part, printed 
 1590, says : ' I remember the saying of Dante that 
 love cannot roughly be thrust out, but it must 
 easily creep.' 
 
 In 1619, not printed until after Bacon's death, a 
 letter from him to King James has : ' Love must 
 creep in service where it cannot go.' 
 
 In * Two Gentlemen of Verona,' not printed 
 until 1623 seven years after the ascribed author's 
 death there is the same sentiment : ' Love will 
 creep in service where it cannot go.' 
 
 I conclude that the cipher claim that Bacon 
 wrote the works ascribed to Greene will be borne 
 out by independent investigation.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 KIT MABLOWE 
 
 IN the year 1891 a memorial statue to this way- 
 ward and short-lived personality was unveiled at 
 Canterbury by the late Sir Henry Irving. His 
 biography has been more than once attempted ; that 
 he was an actor appears to be true ; that he was 
 not a dramatist, I hope to assist in demonstrating. 
 The son of a Canterbury shoemaker, Marlowe 
 was born February, 1563-64. He was a poor 
 scholar at Cambridge in 1587, in which year he 
 took his M.A. He died at Deptford in June, 1593. 
 His conduct shortly before his death brought him 
 into some trouble with the authorities. A fellow- 
 servant, one Thomas Kyd, being also implicated, 
 wrote to the Lord Keeper (probably under the 
 dictation of their employer) a letter explaining his 
 conduct. This letter gives our only glimpse of 
 Marlowe's life between 1587 and 1593. From 
 this we learn (1) that for two years back, at least, 
 
 71
 
 72 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 Marlowe and Kyd were in the service of a certain 
 unnamed lord ; (2) that they wrote together in 
 the same room ; (3) that Marlowe was intemperate, 
 of a cruel heart, irreligious, and by some thought 
 to be an atheist ; (4) that Kyd's ' first acquaintance 
 with this Marlowe rose upon his bearing name to 
 serve my lord, although his lordship never knew his 
 service, but in writing for his players, for never 
 could my lord endure his name or sight when he 
 had heard of his conditions.' 
 
 I have now exhausted the available biographical 
 details. Until the life or tragedy of Marlowe is 
 deciphered from the printed matter in which it is 
 at present hidden, we must be content with what 
 we have. According to the biliteral cipher story 
 deciphered by Mrs. Gallup, Francis, the base- 
 begotten son of Queen Elizabeth, since known to 
 the world as Francis Bacon, purchased from 
 Marlowe the permission to put forth writings in 
 the latter's name. Bacon was the man of secrecy 
 who advised in his essay, ' secrecy in habit, dis- 
 simulation in seasonable use.' 
 
 So we can reasonably expect that he was at the 
 back of the cleverly written Kyd letter, with its apt 
 quotations filled in by another hand. Lord Keeper 
 Puckering had evidently to be quietly assured that 
 the young nobleman Francis, then at the age of
 
 KIT MARLOWE 73 
 
 thirty-two, had not associated with this wicked 
 atheist Marlowe. 
 
 I make no apology for having accepted the 
 cipher story as true. It is the sign-post upon the 
 lonely moorland ; I have preferred to follow the 
 road it indicates, and have not found it to fail. 
 Let others wander into the bogs and tarns if they 
 wish. 
 
 ' Proteus is still Proteus though girt in the 
 apparel of Pactolus,' wrote Bacon in the pen-name 
 of ' Nash.' There is no real difficulty in finding 
 the face of Francis Bacon behind the literary mask 
 of Kit Marlowe. The face is that of the handsome 
 young poet of thirty, not the grave philosopher of 
 sixty. Imagine him with his gay spirits and 
 brilliant abilities, a pensioner on his mother's 
 bounty (see his letter to Burleigh, October 18, 
 1580), actively associated with the Court and 
 politics, yet heavily dubious as to the Queen's 
 ultimate intentions with regard to himself. 
 
 A reference to the works attributed to Marlowe, 
 and a short inquiry into the circumstances of their 
 publication, confirm the cipher allegation that 
 ' Marlowe ' was merely one of Bacon's literary 
 disguises. 
 
 1. In the first place, no writing or play was 
 title-paged to Marlowe in his lifetime, ' Tainbur-
 
 74 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 laine' was anonymous. The other works title- 
 paged to him after death may be taken as nearly 
 as possible in the order of printing. 
 
 2. The play of ' Edward II.' was printed in 
 1594. It has a strong family likeness to the 
 historical plays of the period. Like the English 
 history plays in the ' Shakespeare ' First Folio, it 
 is based upon Holinshed's Chronicles. 
 
 Numerous instances of identity of thought and 
 expression between this play and the admitted 
 works and letters of Bacon are adduced by 
 Mr. R. M. Theobald in ' Shakespeare Studies ' 
 (Sampson Low and Co., 1901). 
 
 3. The play of ' Dr. Faustus ' was printed 1604. 
 It contains reference to an event (the attempt of 
 Dr. Lopez on the Queen's life) which happened 
 after Marlowe's death. In 1616, as Mr. Theobald 
 has pointed out, it was in part rewritten and added 
 to by a hand as good as the first writer. Revision 
 and augmentation of his acknowledged writings 
 was a regular and oft-repeated practice with Bacon. 
 Unless ' Proteus was Proteus? whether in the 
 apparel of Marlowe, Spenser, Kyd, or Shakespeare, 
 we have the curious phenomena of alterations after 
 death in the writings of at least four Elizabethan 
 authors in the style and quality o the work 
 attributed to each author in his lifetime. All
 
 KIT MARLOWE 75 
 
 these alterations and additions occurred while 
 Bacon was alive. This reminds me that the 
 word ' bacon ' is introduced in two places in 
 ' Dr. Faustus ' without apparent adequate reason. 
 
 4. ' The Massacre at Paris ' is an undated play. 
 The author expressed antagonism to the opinions 
 of a contemporary French Professor of Logic, Peter 
 Ramus. The same antagonism is expressed by 
 Bacon in ' Temporis Partus Maximus ' (see 
 Mr. Theobald's book as to this). I find ' Nash,' 
 who I am satisfied (see later) was another mask 
 for Bacon, equally antagonistic. 
 
 5. The ' Tragedy of Dido Queen of Carthage ' 
 is a play which was acted in Marlowe's lifetime. 
 When printed the year after his death, the name of 
 ' Xash ' was introduced as joint author. Mr. Dyce, 
 the critic, could not find any marked differences of 
 versification, and could not determine what verses, 
 if any, were by ' Nash.' 
 
 6. ' The Jew of Malta ' is a play title-paged to 
 Marlowe, printed in 1633 under the auspices of 
 Thomas Heywood. This was a long time (if 
 Marlowe's) for one solitary play to remain un- 
 published. If Bacon's, its publication in 1633, 
 seven years after Bacon died, may have been owing 
 to some good reason. The play of ' The Jew of 
 Malta' is named for the first and, I think, only
 
 76 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 time in that part of the biliteral cipher story which 
 was by Bacon's direction ciphered by his secretary 
 Kawley in the * Sylva Sylvarum' of 1635. It 
 may, therefore, have been printed merely as a 
 vehicle for some portion of the word cipher history. 
 In this play the words ' begging of bacon ' are in- 
 serted without ostensible reason. 
 
 7. The ' Hero and Leander ' verses, entered S.R. 
 in September, 1593, were not printed until 1598, 
 and then in two sestiads. In 1606 four sestiads 
 were added, and the poem reprinted ' as begunne 
 by Christopher Marloe and finished by George 
 Chapman.' Mr. Theobald shows that the two 
 sestiads ascribed to Marlowe cannot be distinguished 
 from the four ascribed to Chapman, and that nothing 
 in Chapman's other work is at all like the { Hero ' 
 sestiads. Equally in the case of Kyd, both Charles 
 Lamb and Coleridge could not find any similarity 
 between the ascribed Ben Jon son's ' Additions ' 
 to ' The Spanish Tragedy ' and Jonson's known 
 writings. Still, it was better to provide a foster- 
 father than to purport to have discovered new 
 cantos on the doorstep, as did the printers of the 
 finally revised edition of the ' Faerie Queene.' 
 
 8. The translation from ' Lucan ' was printed 
 1600. Could any printer, even given the manu- 
 script, have expected to have made a profit by
 
 KIT MARLOWE 77 
 
 printing it ? A living author, particularly one so 
 sensible of his own importance, as was Bacon, 
 might have ventured. 
 
 9. The translation of Ovid's ' Elegies,' by C. M., 
 is undated. Some one was at the expense of print- 
 ing it in Middleborugh, in Holland. As the late 
 Mr. Begley has remarked, it is odd that on the 
 theory of Marlowe authorship a few of the elegies 
 by a deceased author should first be published and 
 followed later by another edition with all of them. 
 
 Bound in the booklet with the Ovid ' Elegies ' 
 were certain epigrams written by J. D. (Sir John 
 
 Davis) : 
 
 ' Qu'allait il faire 
 Dans cette galere ?' 
 
 Davis was not called to the Bar until two years 
 after Marlowe's death. How could they have ever 
 become associated ? But if we lift the Marlowe 
 mask we find the face of Francis Bacon beneath. 
 Davis was a personal friend of Bacon. On Davis 
 going in 1603 as one of the party to conduct 
 James I. from Scotland to England on his acces- 
 sion, Bacon wrote the letter in which he asked 
 Davis ' to be kind to concealed poets. 1 
 
 In the completed edition of the ' Elegies ' is 
 included, next to the fifteenth elegy, an alterna- 
 tive translation by ' B. J.' This translation also
 
 78 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 appears in Jonson's play of ' The Poetaster,' per- 
 formed 1601 and printed 1602. Ovid Junior, in 
 the play, is told to give up poetry, and get to his 
 law-book. The late Mr. Begley was disposed to 
 regard this as a hit at Bacon. He gave other good 
 grounds for thinking that at one period some sort of 
 literary feud was waged between them. 
 
 Except on the assumption that ' Marlowe ' was 
 merely a name used by Bacon in putting forth the 
 Ovid 'Elegies,' the association of Marlowe with 
 Jonson is inexplicable. The completed series of 
 the Ovid translations is undated, but I am disposed 
 to fix the date as subsequent to the printing in 
 1602 of ' The Poetaster.' According to the biliteral 
 cipher story, Bacon was the author of ' Sejanus,' 
 and Ben Jonson was in his close confidence. 
 ' Sejanus ' was produced in 1603. In the preface 
 Jonson states that it was written in collaboration 
 with a certain ' happy genius.' 
 
 If Bacon were thus referred to, it would seem 
 that he and Jonson were on most friendly terms 
 in 1603, and the publication of the completed 
 ' Elegies ' with the alternative translations of the 
 fifteenth elegy, whether the second one was written 
 by Jonson or not though I do not see why he 
 should not have done so would emphasize to 
 those who knew the authors, the good understand- 
 
 ft* *
 
 KIT MARLOWE 79 
 
 ing arrived at. Mr. Begley has given ample proof 
 of knowledge by the literary men of the time that 
 Bacon was a poet, but concealed. He has further 
 reminded us that even Stowe, in his ' Annals,' 
 1605, joins Sir Francis Bacon with Sir John 
 Davis as two of the poets of Elizabeth's reign. 
 Surely these two were the C. M. and J. D. of the 
 ' Elegies ' and ' Epigrams,' the first edition of 
 which was destroyed by order of the Archbishop 
 of June 1, 1599, only to be reprinted abroad, with 
 additions, after a considerable interval of years. 
 
 That Bacon was the ' happy genius ' who joined 
 in writing ' Sejanus ' is indicated by that tendency 
 for a writer to repeat himself, which Mr. Crawford 
 in ' Collectanea ' defines as ' style.' When Bacon 
 celebrated his sixtieth birthday, Jonson wrote a 
 poem for the occasion, commencing 
 
 * Hail, happy genius of this ancient pile.' 
 
 10. I close with what I think is fairly good 
 proof that Bacon, the Proteus of the Elizabethan 
 Rennaissance, was still Proteus, whether girt in 
 the apparel of Marloe or Shaksper. I find this 
 proof in Gabriel Harvey's pamphlets. Any person 
 desirous of knowing more of the inside working of 
 the movement for the advancement of learning 
 should read the Harvey-Immerito letters and
 
 80 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 Harvey-Nash pamphlets, together composing a 
 spirited correspondence between Bacon on the one 
 hand, writing under his various pen-names, and 
 Harvey on the other. 
 
 I infer from Harvey's ' Sonnet ' of the year 1593 
 that he had considerable misgiving as to the 
 wisdom of Bacon, after the death in June of that 
 year of his actor-mask Marlowe, bringing upon the 
 scene in the next month another actor, Will Shak- 
 sper, in whose reconstructed name of William 
 Shakespeare he published the ' Venus and Adonis ' 
 poem. Evidently not sorry that the turbulent 
 and free- thinking Marlowe had ended his earthly 
 career, Harvey nevertheless had doubts about the 
 expediency of the working arrangement newly 
 concluded by Bacon with the ' deserving man ' 
 from Stratford-on-Avon. 
 
 I copy below the portion of the Harvey Sonnet, 
 which to my mind shows this : 
 
 * Wonders enhance their power in numbers odd, 
 The fatal yeare of yeares is ninety three 
 Parma hath kist, Demaine entreats the rodd, 
 
 ***** 
 Navarre woos Roome ; Charlemaine gives Guise the Phy : 
 Weep Powles, thy Tamburlaine vouchsafes to dye. 
 
 UEnvoy. 
 
 The hugest miracle remains behind, 
 
 The second Shakerley Rashe-sivashe to bhule." 1
 
 KIT MARLOWE 81 
 
 There is reason to believe that Harvey's antici- 
 pations were not realized. Shaksper kept clear 
 of the Star Chamber, and it may be said that 
 neither he nor Marlowe nor their kindred ever 
 made claim to authorship. Could Marlowe have 
 been consulted he would have asked for kindly 
 oblivion. While, therefore, it may have been con- 
 sonant with his wishes that a literary fame he 
 never invited, though his poverty may have con- 
 sented, should be removed from his shoulders, 
 justice is due to him in one other respect. His 
 speculations on religion were bold for his times. 
 The word ' atheist ' was levelled against him in 
 his lifetime, and has echoed concerning him ever 
 since. Yet the evidence does not justify the scorn 
 attached to his memory.
 
 CHAPTER Y 
 
 * SPORTING KYD ' 
 
 THOMAS KIDD, the son of a London scrivener or 
 writer of the Courte letter, was baptized on 
 November 6, 1558. He would seem to have 
 followed his father's occupation that of a person 
 employed to copy or write legibly letters and 
 documents prepared or dictated by others. 
 
 According to a London Probate record, dated 
 December 30, 1594, his father and mother sur- 
 rendered all right to administer the goods of their 
 deceased son, Thomas, so that his death had 
 occurred before that date. 
 
 In 1901 Professor Boas, a learned Shakespearian 
 scholar and author, published a collection of what 
 he believed to be the works of Kyd, together with 
 many valuable comments and notes. 
 
 Mr. Boas adjudged as his works two original 
 plays, ' The Spanish Tragedy ' and ' Soliman and 
 Perseda ' ; one translated play, ' Cornelia/ from 
 
 82
 
 'SPORTING KYD' 83 
 
 the French of Gamier ; a translation from the 
 Italian of Tasso, entitled ' The Housholder's Philo- 
 sophic ' ; and a short four-page pamphlet called 
 ' The Murder of John Brewen.' 
 From this selection I eliminate 
 
 1. The Brewen pamphlet, as unimportant, and 
 as being only attributed to Kyd because his name 
 is written upon a print of it. 
 
 2. ' Soliman and Perseda,' an old play even in 
 1599, when reprinted, because it is anonymous 
 and mainly ascribed to Kyd by reason of its 
 subject being used as a sub-play in ' The Spanish 
 Tragedy.' 
 
 This leaves for examination 
 
 1. ' The Spanish Tragedy, 'licensed for the Press 
 on October 6, 1592, printed anonymously in 1594, 
 and alleged by Ben Jonson, in ' Bartholomew 
 Fair' (1614), to have been on the stage for thirty 
 years. It was probably performed as early as 
 1586, and certainly before 1589 (see Nash, preface 
 to Greene's ' Menaphon'). In 1612 Hey wood, in 
 the Apology for actors, quoted three lines from the 
 play, and said they were written by Kyd. 
 
 2. ' The Housholder's Philosophic,' printed 
 1588, as translated by ' T. K.' from the Italian of 
 Tasso. 
 
 3. ' Cornelia,' a translation of the French play 
 
 62
 
 84 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 ' Cornelie,' by Gamier, licensed to the Press 
 January 26, 1594-95, first printed as by 
 ' T. K.,' and next printed (1595) as by Thoma 
 Kid. The ascribed author had, however, died the 
 previous year. 
 
 What manner of man was this ' writer ' who 
 never in his lifetime claimed authorship of the two 
 plays ? Could he really have contented himself 
 with the usual copyist's initials on a valuable 
 translation ? 
 
 Mr. Boas finds internal proof that the ' author ' 
 was familiar with a fairly wide range of Latin 
 authors, and that he had Seneca's dramas at his 
 finger-ends. Of Spanish he knew a few phrases. 
 Like Shakespeare, he could quote pocus palldbris. 
 With French and Italian he was much more 
 familiar. Bel-Imperia spoke in ' courtly French.' 
 
 Mr. Boas is of opinion that the author visited 
 France, because Lorenzo speaks of having seen 
 extempore performances ' in Paris amongst the 
 French Tragedians.' 
 
 Of Italian the author's knowledge was service- 
 able rather than accurate. Like ' Shakespeare,' 
 geography was not a strong point with him. The 
 former caused Valentine, in ' Two Gentlemen of 
 Verona,' to voyage by sea 'from Verona to Milan. 
 The latter, in * The Spanish Tragedy,' refers to a sea
 
 SPORTING KYD 1 85 
 
 journey from Lisbon to Madrid. Perhaps in both 
 cases part of the journey was by sea. Though as 
 a translator he did not reach high-water mark, 
 he was evidently a man of resource and master- 
 fulness. 
 
 Witness Mr. Boas, who commented as follows 
 upon both French and Italian translations : ' Yet 
 in spite of gross blunders the version in either case 
 is spirited and vigorous. The Italian prose and 
 the French verse are both somewhat expanded in 
 their English rendering. The imagery becomes 
 more concrete ; more of realistic detail is intro- 
 duced. Occasionally passages of some length are 
 interpolated by the translator. Hence " The Hous- 
 holder's Philosophic " casts light on Kyd's views 
 on certain subjects. Thus his emphatic elaboration 
 of Tasso's protest against women painting their 
 faces shows that he shared Shakespeare's aversion 
 to the practice.' 
 
 He showed a love for out-of-the-way words 
 and phrases. He coined words. He reminded 
 Mr. Boas of Spenser in his usage of Middle- 
 English forms. He is also to be found using dis- 
 tinctively euphuistic constructions a matter of 
 some difficulty, let me say, if your mind is not 
 shaped that way. The author borrowed freely 
 from what are known as Watson's verses and ideas.
 
 86 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 He used (and perhaps anticipated) a passage of 
 the ' Faerie Queene.' 
 
 The only autobiographical details vouchsafed by 
 the author occur in the dedication of ' Cornelia ' 
 to the Countess of Sussex, whose husband owned 
 or protected a troupe of actors. According to this, 
 the translation had occupied the author ' a winter's 
 week.' As it was licensed on January 26, 1594-95, 
 and was produced in haste, it was probably 
 written during that month to oblige the Earl, 
 who may have wanted a new play for some special 
 occasion. 
 
 But the translator was evidently in low spirits. 
 While writing it he endured ' bitter times and 
 privie broken passions,' which he asks to be taken 
 into consideration. He remarks : ' Having no leisure 
 but such as evermore is traveld with the afflictions 
 of the minde than which the woorld affords no 
 greater misery it may be wondered at by some how 
 I durst undertake a matter of this moment.' Yet 
 he had a good conceit of himself. Like the author 
 of the Shakespeare Sonnets, he evidently thought 
 his labours would eternize the lady, for he says : ' I 
 have presumed upon your true conceit and enter- 
 tainment of these small endeavours that thus I 
 purposed to make known my memory of you and 
 them to be immortall? This is rather ' tall ' if we
 
 'SPORTING KYD 1 87 
 
 are dealing with a young scrivener with only one 
 original play to his account ! (Bacon had a 
 notion that his ' Advancement of Learning ' would 
 be an enduring monument to King James.) He 
 promises better work next summer with the 
 tragedy of Portia, and like Thomas Thorpe to the 
 ' onlie begetter of the Shake-speare Sonnets,' con- 
 cluded by wishing her ' all happiness.' 
 
 Lord Rosebery, in a recent speech, suggested 
 the desirability of making, from time to time, a list 
 of public library books which have lost their 
 usefulness. Professor Boas' ' Kyd ' will not be 
 one of these. He is too learned. But why, with 
 the obvious inferences and evidence under his 
 spectacles, should he have left to another to point 
 out the true author of ' The Spanish Tragedy ' and 
 ' Cornelia ' ? I affirm that Francis Bacon wrote 
 the first at about the age of twenty -four, and the 
 second at the age of thirty-three. The ' courtly 
 French ' was acquired by Francis from September, 
 1576, to March, 1378-79, during his life at 
 the French Court. He would see the French 
 tragedians perform in Paris. Acquiring his 
 French largely through the ear, his acquaintance 
 with French grammar was likely to be defective, 
 and he was probably never an expert translator. 
 His Italian would naturally be inferior to his
 
 88 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 French. As an earnest student and writer of 
 poetry from the age of fifteen, which may be 
 gleaned from both the Harvey - Immerito letters 
 (1580) and a verse from 'The Spanish Tragedy' 
 
 itself 
 
 ' When I was young I gave my minde 
 And pleid myself to fruitles Poetrie ' 
 
 Francis was, by the time he came to England, an 
 accomplished writer of both prose and verse. 
 What is more natural than that he should seek 
 to exhibit in print his wonderful facility ? I pass 
 over his first prose, viz., ' Euphues ' (1579), and 
 his first considerable verse, ' The Shepheard's 
 Kalendar' (1579), both published anonymously. 
 The biliteral cipher story tells how he eventual ly 
 obtained the use of the name of Spenser as 
 nominal author of his poems, that of Greene for 
 his light tales, and those of Marlowe, Peele, 
 and Shakspere for his plays. ' The Mirror of 
 Modesty/ licensed in April, 1579, and * Mamillia,' 
 licensed in 1580, were not printed until the young 
 serving scholar, Greene, came to London in 1583. 
 These arrangements were not accomplished all at 
 once. His early output of plays must have been 
 very considerable, and, as a matter of fact, no 
 plays were printed as by any of the above-men- 
 tioned persons until after their respective deaths,
 
 'SPORTING KYD 1 89 
 
 The only few exceptions were in the cases of 
 Shakspere and Peele. 
 
 Yet the plays were being rapidly produced, and 
 it became desirable, and more probably essential, 
 that the public should be diverted from considering 
 the question of authorship too closely. 
 
 About 1589, Thomas Nashe, another serving 
 scholar from Cambridge, came to London to seek 
 employment, being at that date twenty-one years 
 of age. I am quite satisfied that his name also 
 was utilized by a man of twenty-eight, who had 
 large experience and culture, and was able to 
 write in various styles ; but this, for the moment, 
 is immaterial. In a preface to ' Menaphon,' 
 printed in that year (1589), it is sought to be 
 indicated, in an inconclusive sort of way, that 
 the popular plays of ' Hamlet,' ' Taming of a 
 Shrew,' ' The Spanish Tragedy,' and one other 
 (I think ' Titus Andronicus '), which had been 
 staged prior to that year, were the work of Kyd, 
 whose initials had already been placed upon the 
 translation of ' The Housholder's Philosophic,' 
 printed the year before, and who is, in the Nash 
 preface, referred to obscurely by the terms ' Nove- 
 rint ' and the ' Kidde in Jisop,' and as one who had 
 intermeddled with Italian translations. 
 
 By 1594 both Marlowe and Greene had died,
 
 90 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 Peele was a debauched wreck. Shaksper's name 
 had only been connected with poems. Towards 
 the end of 1594 Kyd was also dead. What more 
 natural than to put forward Kyd's name as the 
 author of ' Cornelia ' ? In 1594-95, when this 
 translated play was printed, Francis was in very 
 low water. He had offended the Queen, was for- 
 bidden the Court, and was manifestly hard up, 
 unwell, weary of delay, dejected and miserable. 
 He seems later on to have redeemed his promise in 
 the dedication to the Countess to write a play on 
 the subject of Portia, as the tragedy o ' The 
 Merchant of Venice ' was produced in that or the 
 following year. About 1595 Mr. Har, a poet, 
 whom Mr. Boas identified as Sir William Herbert, 
 appears to have known who was the real author 
 both of ' Lucrece,' printed 1594, as by Shakespeare, 
 and of ' Cornelia,' printed 1595, as by Kyd. This 
 poet wrote : 
 
 ' You that have writ of chaste Lucretia 
 
 Whose death was witness of her spotless life 
 Or pen'd the praise of sad Cornelia 
 
 Whose blameless name hath made her fame so rife. 1 
 
 So that the name Shakespeare on ' Lucrece ' and 
 the name Kyd on ' Cornelia ' had not deceived one 
 frequenter of the Court, at any rate. But to 
 proceed.
 
 'SPORTING KYD' 91 
 
 We have seen how well acquainted the author of 
 ' The Spanish Tragedy ' was with courtly French 
 and with Italian. 
 
 Mr. Boas shows that he was also well acquainted 
 with law terms. A young scrivener, or in other 
 words copyist of legal documents, might be familiar 
 with the terms ' action of batterie,' ' of debt,' ' action 
 of the case/ ' pleading,' ' bond/ ' equitie/ ' lease/ 
 and even ' ejectione firmse '; but the formal phrase- 
 ology of international law used in the articles 
 of marriage between Balthazar and Bel-Imperia 
 (' Spanish Tragedy ') would certainly be beyond a 
 scrivener's ken. 
 
 Bacon, while with the British Ambassador, 
 would have had much to do with international 
 law. The practice o altering, expanding, and 
 improving upon the work in course of translation, 
 to which Mr. Boas draws attention in the author, 
 was also a settled habit with Bacon. That Francis, 
 at an early date (1583) allowed to practise at the 
 Bar, was an able and cultured lawyer we also know. 
 We know, too, that he was a user of out-of-the-way 
 phrases and an inventor of new words. ' The 
 Spanish Tragedy/ moreover, met with the ex- 
 perience common to Spenser's ' Faerie Queene/ to 
 Marlowe's 'Faustus/ and to several Shakespeare 
 plays. Subsequent to the deaths of Spenser,
 
 92 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 Marlowe, and Shaksper, certain of the works 
 ascribed to their authorship received important 
 additions and alterations at the hands of a brilliant 
 but unknown expert. 
 
 In his 'Shakespeare Symphony' (p. 301), Mr. 
 Bayley cites a very strange instance of the manner 
 in which Bacon's and Kyd's minds synchronized. 
 In 1594 Bacon, wearied by fruitless applications 
 for employment, wrote to his friend, Fulke 
 Greville : 
 
 ' What though the Master of the Rolls and My 
 Lord of Essex and yourself admit my case without 
 doubt, yet, in the meantime, I have a hard condi- 
 tion to stand, so that whatsoever service I do to 
 her Majesty, it shall be thought to be servitium 
 viscatum, lime twigs and fetches to place myself, 
 and so I shall have envy, not thanks. This is a 
 course to quench all good spirits, and to corrupt 
 every man's nature. ... I am weary of it, as also 
 of wearying my good friends.' 
 
 In the same year (1594) Kyd seems to have 
 suffered a similar experience ; he used the same 
 metaphor, and advocated exactly the method which 
 the persistent but discouraged Bacon was then 
 actually employing : 
 
 * Thus experience bids the wise to deal. I lay 
 the plot, he prosecutes the point ; I set the trap,
 
 'SPORTING KYD' 93 
 
 he breaks the worthless twigs, and sees not that 
 wherewith the bird was limed. Thus, hopeful men 
 that mean to hold their own must look like fowlers 
 to their dearest friends.' ' Spanish Tragedy,' 
 III. 4. 
 
 The accord here is between words and actions. 
 Bacon, the hopeful man, desiring to hold his own, 
 lays his plot by looking like a fowler to his dearest 
 friends to prosecute his point, but her Majesty, he 
 fears, will imagine ' limed twigs.' 
 
 In 1602, eighteen years after Kidd's death, ' The 
 Spanish Tragedy ' was reprinted with a number of 
 most valuable and important additions. It is the 
 current practice to call these Ben Jonson's additions, 
 because Henslowe in his diary so records a pay- 
 ment in 1601. Mr. Boas writes of these additions 
 as being so steeped in passion and wild sombre 
 beauty that they threw into harsh relief Kyd's 
 more old-fashioned technique and versification. He 
 quotes both Charles Lamb and Edward Fitzgerald 
 as affirming the ' Additions ' to be totally unlike 
 Jonson's admitted work. 
 
 At a certain date Jonson, according to the cipher 
 .story, became Bacon's assistant and confidant. 
 When Bacon was sixty, Jonson in verse addressed 
 him as ' Hail, Happy Genius of this ancient pile.' 
 In his preface to ' Sejanus,' a play first acted in
 
 94 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 1603 and probably written earlier, he refers to a 
 certain ' happy genius ' who had collaborated with 
 him. The cipher story claims ' Sejanus ' as the 
 work of Bacon. Jonson may well, therefore, have 
 been only an intermediary for Bacon when ' The 
 Spanish Tragedy ' was revised for acting by the 
 players associated with Henslowe. 
 
 In his verses prefixed to the Shakespeare folio 
 Ben Jonson refers to ' Sporting Kyd.' 
 
 The ' Additions ' to ' The Spanish Tragedy ' 
 gives us at once the source of Jonson's jocular 
 epithet and an indication as plain as a pikestaff as 
 to who the author really was. 
 
 Reference should be made to Act III., Scene xi., 
 where the third passage of Additions occurs. The 
 whole passage is worth reading, but I quote a few 
 lines only : 
 
 * What is there yet in a sonne ? He must be fed 
 Be taught to goe and speake. I or yet ? 
 Why not a man love a Calfe as well ? 
 Or melt in passion ore a frisking Kid 
 As for a sonne ? Methinks a young Bacon 
 Or a fine little smooth Horse-colt 
 Should moove a man as much as dooth a sonne.' 
 
 When young Bacon wrote ' The Spanish Tragedy' 
 he was a frisking kid of about twenty-four. At 
 the age of forty-one he could not, to use the words 
 of Jonson, ' spare or pass by a jest.'
 
 'SPORTING KYD 1 95 
 
 Is it too much to ask that Mr. Boas may even- 
 tually also perceive the joke ? His own researches 
 reveal so much to disprove the law-stationer theory 
 of authorship that it is to be regretted that the 
 obvious is at present invisible to him. 
 
 Mr. Charles Crawford, whose ' Collectanea ' has 
 been recently published, is another valuable worker 
 in the Elizabethan field ; but toiling as he does 
 without the ' Filum Labyrinthi/ he is depriving 
 himself of the discoveries to which his exertions 
 and talents justly entitle him. He is assured that 
 ' Arden of Faversham,' a play which Tieck, Swin- 
 burne, and other critics firmly claim for Shake- 
 speare, was written by Kyd. He thinks the 
 vocabulary, phrasing, and general style of ' Arden ' 
 are those of Kyd. Kyd in turn is convicted of 
 frequent borrowings from Spenser, Watson, Mar- 
 lowe, Lyly, and Peele. Elsewhere Mr. Crawford 
 remarks : ' But all men repeat themselves both in 
 speech and writing, and it is these repetitions that 
 go to make up what is termed " style." Until 
 critics realize the protean literary labours of 
 Francis Bacon the muddle will be perpetuated. 
 Every one of his repetitions will be regarded as a 
 plagiarism, an imitation, or a repetition, accord- 
 ingly as it serves the argument of the moment.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 ' PYEBOABD ' 
 
 GEOKGE PEELE, born about 1558, was a free 
 scholar of Christ's Hospital, of which his father 
 was clerk. He was at Oxford from 1571 until 
 1579, when he graduated M.A. at Christ Church. 
 In Michaelmas of that year he was in London. By 
 1581 he was married and settled there. He died 
 between 1596 and 1598. The biliteral cipher 
 story states that Peele, for valuable consideration 
 in money, sold to Bacon the use of his name 
 as the supposed author of certain of Bacon's plays 
 and verses. 
 
 This notice will accordingly be confined to the 
 plays and verses either published in Peele's name 
 or at a subsequent date expressly ascribed to his 
 authorship. They are : 
 
 PLAYS. 
 
 1. * The Arraignment of Paris : A Pastoral presented 
 before the Queen's Majestic by the Children of her 
 Chappell.' 1 Imprinted (anonymously) 1584 
 
 96
 
 'PYEBOARD' 97 
 
 2. 'Edward I.' Printed in 1593, with the following 
 words at the end : ' Yours by George Peele, Master of Arts 
 in Oxenford.' 
 
 3. ' The Love of King David and Fair Bethsabe with 
 the Tragedie of Absalom. As it hath been divers times 
 plaied on the stage. Written by George Peele. 1599." 
 
 4. ' The Old Wives 1 Tale. A pleasant conceited 
 Comedie played by the Queen's Majestie's players. 
 Written by G. P. 1595.' 
 
 VERSES. 
 
 1 . ' The Device of the Pageant borne before Woolstan 
 Dixie, Lord Mayor, on 29th Oct., 1585. Done by 
 George Peele, Master of Arts in Oxford.' 
 
 2. ' The Device of the Pageant borne before Lord Mayor 
 Webbe, 29th Oct., 1591, by G. Peele, Maister of Arts in 
 Oxford.' 
 
 3. ' Speeches to the Queen at Theobalds, 10th May, 
 1591 'initialed ' G. P.' at end of the MS. 
 
 4. ' A Farewell. Entituled to the famous and fortunate 
 Generalls of our English forces : Sir John Norris and Syr 
 Francis Drake, Knights, and all theyr brave and resolute 
 followers. Whereunto is annexed : A Tale of Troy . . . 
 Doone by George Peele, Maister of Artes in Oxforde. 
 1598.' 
 
 5. ' An Eglogue Gratulatorie. Entituled to the right 
 honorable and renowned Shepheard of Albion's Arcadia : 
 Robert Earle of Essex and Ewe, for his welcome into 
 England from Portugall. Done by George Peele, Maister 
 of Arts in Oxon. 1589.' 
 
 6. ' Polyhymnia, describing the honorable Triumph at 
 Tylt on the 17th of November last past . . . With Sir 
 Henrie Lea his resignation of honour at Tylt . . . 1590.' 
 On the back of the title is: 'Polyhimnia. Entituled 
 
 7
 
 98 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 with all duty to the Right Honorable Lord Compton of 
 Compton. By George Peele, Maister of Artes in Oxforde. 1 
 
 7. ' The Honor of the Garter. Displaced in a Poeme 
 gratulatorie : Entituled to the worthie renowned Earle of 
 Northumberland. . . . By George Peele, Maister of Artes 
 in Oxenforde.' No date. 
 
 8. 'Anglorum Feriae. Englande's Hollydayes cele- 
 brated the 17th of Novemb. last 1595. ... By George 
 Peele, Mr. of Arte in Oxforde. 1 
 
 The above are, I think, all the material works 
 ascribed to the authorship of Peele ; and the object 
 of this chapter is to consider how far the allegation 
 of the cipher story, that they were written by 
 young Francis Bacon, can be justified. I use the 
 word ' young ' in order to remind my readers that 
 I am not dealing with the matured and serious 
 period of Bacon's life, and that they must think of 
 him, not as in his later portraits, but as he looked 
 not many years after the date of the miniature 
 by Milliard of the handsome, curly-haired youth, 
 having upon it the artist's words, ' Si tabula 
 daretur digna animam Hi811tfcm.' Of the four plays 
 earmarked to Peele, one is a pastoral, another an 
 early chronicle history, the third a more modern 
 development of the religious play, and the fourth 
 an interlude or farce. 
 
 ' The Arraignment of Paris ' (which was the 
 pastoral play) was, according to Mr. Fleay, per-
 
 'PYEBOARD' 99 
 
 formed before the Queen, by the children of her 
 Chappell probably on February 5, 1581. 
 
 As a pastoral, it seems in natural sequence to 
 the ' Shepheard's Kalendar,' published anonymously 
 in 1579. It makes use of two of the names Colin 
 and Hobbinol of personages in the ' Kalendar,' 
 and was perhaps one of the first plays that Bacon 
 wrote. Other two may have been the ' Woman in 
 the Moon ' and ' Alexander and Campaspe/ both 
 subsequently printed and ascribed to ' Lyly.' ' The 
 Woman in the Moon ' seems to have been Bacon's 
 first essay in blank verse. ' Alexander and Cam- 
 paspe ' was reproduced at the Blackfriars Theatre 
 by the boy players in 1596 or later. In the 
 prologue used at the Blackfriars Theatre the 
 author declared his intention o ' mixing mirth with 
 counsel and discipline with delight, thinking it not 
 amisse in the same garden to sow pot-herbs that we 
 set flowers' This is one of many indications that 
 the ' Lyly ' plays represent early dramatic efforts 
 by Francis, written for performance by the boy 
 actors, mostly those known as the ' children of Her 
 Majesty's Chappell.' 
 
 Concerning ' The Arraignment of Paris/ Pro- 
 fessor Ward wrote that its versification was various 
 and versatile. Mr. Bullen noted that 'rhymed 
 lines of fourteen syllables and rhymed lines of ten 
 

 
 100 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 syllables predominate ; but that there are passages 
 notably Paris's oration before the Council of the 
 Gods which show that Peele wrote a more musical 
 blank verse than had yet been written by any 
 English poet' Francis was evidently trying his 
 hand at various forms of versification. 
 
 The internal evidence of his authorship of this 
 play is considerable. I content myself with men- 
 tioning one or two indications. First, I think it 
 is common ground that, whether or no Kyd, while 
 copying law drafts, became an expert lawyer, and 
 whether or no Shaksper became equally con- 
 versant with law by occasional visits to the 
 Stratford County Court and subsequent gossip 
 with London barristers, no one has ever asserted 
 that Peele was a lawyer. Yet ' The Arraignment ' 
 absolutely bristles with legal jargon. Read 
 Mercury's speech in Act III., Scene ii., or the 
 whole of the Act IV., Scene i., in proof of this. 
 Another little straw shows how the wind blows. 
 In Act L, Scene i., are these lines : 
 
 ' Why then Pomona with her fruit comes time enough I see, 
 Come on awhile ; with country storey like friends we venter 
 forth.' 
 
 A correspondent of 'Baconiana' (1904), with 
 reference to the passage in the 'Epistle Dedicatorie' 
 of the First Folio Shakespeare (1623) viz.,
 
 'PYEBOARD' 101 
 
 4 Country hands reach foorth milke, creame, fruits or 
 what they have ' 
 
 noted a parallel phrase from a letter written by 
 Bacon to Sir George Yilliers : 
 
 * And now, because I am in the country, I will send you 
 some of my country fruits' (1616). 
 
 According to the late Mr. Begley in ' Is it 
 Shakespeare ?' at p. 113, the folio passage referred 
 to is evidently taken from the dedicatory epistle 
 to Vespasian, prefixed to Pliny's ' Natural History.' 
 Messrs. Seccombe and Allen, in ' The Age of 
 Shakespeare,' affirm that ' Lyly ' drew his similes 
 largely from Pliny's ' Natural History.' If * Lyly' 
 was only a pen-name for young Francis, the Pliny 
 dedication would naturally become fixed on his 
 mind at an impressionable age. Another indication 
 of common authorship is to be found at Act I., 
 Scene i., in the speech by Flora. Many of the 
 favourite flowers which are named respectively in 
 Bacon's ' Essay of Gardens ' (see ' Parallelisms,' 
 E. Reed) and in ' The Winter's Tale,' are also 
 mentioned in Flora's speech. Nor must I omit 
 the significance of the eulogy of Queen Elizabeth 
 with which ' The Arraignment ' concludes : 
 
 b 
 
 ' Long live the noble Phoenix of our age, 
 Our fair Eliza, our Zabet fair !'
 
 102 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 If the cipher story is to be credited and I most 
 certainly find it a safe guide the fathering upon 
 Peele of ' The Arraignment ' by Bacon, writing in 
 the name of ' Nash ' in 1589, was only in accordance 
 with his scheme of dissimulation. 
 
 In another chapter I have ventured to give what 
 I believe to be convincing proofs that ' Nash ' was 
 only another pen-name for Bacon. 
 
 The play of ' Edward I.' is also ascribed to 
 Peele. His name is at the foot of it. 
 
 It is one of the series of chronicle plays, which, 
 in the words of Mr. J. A. Symonds (in ' Shake- 
 spere's Predecessors '), are peculiar to English 
 history. Says Mr. Symonds : ' We know quite 
 well that Shakespere did not make, but found, the 
 chronicle play in full existence. Yet he and his 
 humbler fellow- workers together undertook the 
 instruction of the people in their history.' It is 
 one of the difficulties of the Shakspere author- 
 ship cult that, owing to Stratford considerations, 
 the ' deserving man ' (as the Burbages called him) 
 has to be dissociated from early states of the 
 chronicle plays. The simpler course of accepting 
 the fact that he was only one of several masks for 
 Francis Bacon would enable the order of produc- 
 tion of the chronicle plays to be the more readily 
 arrived at.
 
 ' PYEBOARD ' 103 
 
 Professor Courthope has now concluded that 
 ' The Troublesome Reign of King John,' printed 
 (1591) anonymously, was written by the same 
 author who wrote the other great plays in the First 
 Folio Shakespeare. This adds strong probability 
 to my contention that the author in question 
 (Bacon) wrote the famous chronicle history of 
 King Edward L, and published it in the name 
 of Peele not very long afterwards (1593). But he 
 never seems to have troubled to polish this play, 
 and in subsequent editions it was not materially 
 altered. Mr. Symonds thought that ' Edward I.' 
 marked a considerable advance on ' The Trouble- 
 some Reign of King John,' and that Marlowe's 
 touch ' transfigured this department of the drama ' 
 by the production of ' Edward II.' True, it was 
 not entered in the Stationers' Register until 
 July 6, 1593, Marlowe being then dead ; but as 
 it was title-paged to Marlowe when printed in 
 1598, we are asked to accept it, not as the improved 
 work of the more mature Francis Bacon, but as the 
 inspiration of the genius of Marlowe in the year 
 1590. Over the anonymous play of ' Edward III.,' 
 printed in 1596, a glorious literary battle has raged. 
 A, B, C, and D have claimed it vigorously as the 
 work of Shakspere ; E, F, G, H, I, and K as 
 energetically have denied it. Mr. Symonds
 
 104 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 summed up the situation with the supposition 
 that before 1596 there was a playwright superior 
 to Greene, Peele, Nash, and Lodge, but not 
 superior to Shakspere and Marlowe 'one, more- 
 over, who had deliberately chosen for his model 
 the Shaksperian style o lyrism in its passage 
 through the influence of Marlowe.' shade of 
 Francis Bacon ! This ' vowed and oft-experi- 
 mented secrecie ' of yours has caused sore trouble 
 to the literary critic ! 
 
 You as ' Nash ' in ' Piers Pennilesse ' (1592) 
 commented with pride on your scheme of teaching 
 history by the chronicle plays. As ' Hey wood ' in 
 1612, twenty years later, you, or one of your hench- 
 men, reviewed the result, and pronounced it good. 
 
 I do not, shade ! think it needful to hunt for 
 much internal evidence of your authorship of 
 ' Edward I.,' further than to notice your legal 
 jokes and your facility in the language of Italy, 
 both ancient and modern ; but I should like to 
 know what was your little jeu d' esprit in Scene xii. 
 
 I know that in 4 Summer's Last Will and Testa- 
 ment,' played in the autumn of 1592, you jested 
 about ' Saint Francis,' a holy saint, and never had 
 any money ; but why in ' Edward I.' (1593) do you 
 drag in ' Saint Francis ' five times, and then allude 
 to a breakfast of ' calf's head and bacon'?
 
 'PYEBOARD' 105 
 
 ' DAVID AND BETHSABE.' 
 
 Of the religious play of ' David and Bethsabe,' 
 and the interlude of ' The Old Wives' Tale,' I do 
 not propose to say very much. 
 
 The former may have been written during the 
 early part of 1593, when Francis was nervous and 
 afraid of dying from the plague, and when he 
 wrote under the pen-name of ' Nash ' the religious 
 homily 'Christ's Tears over Jerusalem.' 
 
 I draw attention to the speeches of Solomon and 
 David in Scene xv. of this play. 
 
 ' It would content me, father, first to learn 
 How the Eternal framed the firmament, 
 Which bodies lend their influence by fire, 
 And which are filled with hoary winter's ice, 
 What sign is rainy and what star is fair. 1 
 Again : 
 
 ' O Thou great God, ravish my earthly sprite, 
 That for the time a more than human skill 
 May feed the organons of all my sense/ 
 
 ' David and Bethsabe ' was not printed until 
 1599, a period near the maturity of Bacon's literary 
 power. It was conveniently fathered upon the 
 then deceased Peele. 
 
 The ' Old Wives' Tale,' printed in 1595, appears to 
 have been acted by the Queen's players. The date 
 of production is put by Mr. Fleay at about 1590. 
 Its title was a favourite expression with 'Lyly.'
 
 106 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 What was its precise connection with Elizabethan 
 drama may be ascertained some day. For my 
 purpose I note that it brought upon the theatre 
 stage some portion of the Harvey-Nash contro- 
 versy. ' ISTash,' in one of his anti-Harvey writings, 
 uses and parodies two lines of Harvey's 'Encomium 
 Lauri,' printed in 1580. 
 
 In the ' Old Wives' Tale ' another hexameter is 
 used : 
 
 ' Oh that I might but I may not, woe to my destiny 
 therefore. 1 
 
 Bacon as ' Nash ' in the preface to ' Menaphon,' 
 1589, ridicules certain verses by Dr. Stany hurst. 
 As ' Peele ' he does the same in this play. 
 Mr. Fleay thinks that some of the outlandish 
 names such as Polemackero Lacidus (Polly, make 
 a rope, lass) are hits at the Harvey family and 
 the father's trade of ropemaker. Mr. Dodsley drew 
 attention to the fact that during all the Harvey- 
 Nash controversy Peele is never mentioned. I 
 venture to infer that Harvey knew that ' Xash 
 and ' Peele ' were merely different masks for his 
 young friend Francis Bacon. 
 
 THE POETICAL WORKS ATTRIBUTED TO ' PEELE.' 
 
 Dealing now with the verses to which Peele's 
 name is attached, I have no notion whether Peele
 
 PYEBOARD ' 107 
 
 himself was some sort of a poet or not. Perhaps 
 he was. Judging, however, by external evidence, 
 I should conclude that Francis, and not Peele, 
 wrote the two Lord Mayor's Pageants. 
 
 The ability o young Francis to turn out a masque 
 or write speeches for a tilt-yard or other ceremony 
 seems to have been taken for granted. These 
 Lord Mayors were rich Aldermen, married to two 
 sisters. Francis himself eventually married an 
 Alderman's daughter. 
 
 From the Dixie Pageant of 1589 1 select the line : 
 
 * The wrathful storms of winter's rage doth bide." 1 
 
 ' Winter's rage ' was rather a favourite expression 
 with Francis. 
 
 From the Webbe Pageant of 1591 I base my 
 conclusions on the following lines : 
 
 1. ' And made the silver moon and heaven's bright eye. 1 
 
 2. ' Enrolled in register of eternal fame. 1 
 
 3. ' As bright as is the burning lamp of heaven.' 
 
 ' A Farewell to Sir John Norris and Sir Francis 
 Drake' (1589). 
 
 This was doubtless written by Bacon. At the 
 back of the title are the arms of Elizabeth, which 
 he would naturally have permission to use on such 
 an occasion. The dedication and the first three
 
 108 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 lines of the verse furnish good internal proof ot 
 his authorship. Bacon in his own name and those 
 of his masks is to be trusted to use the term 
 1 swelling ' in association with either seas or waves. 
 The thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth lines are 
 quite Shakespearian. They reminded Mr. Dyce ot 
 Othello's 'Farewell to War.' To me they recall 
 part of the Hamlet soliloquy. 
 Later on we once more have : 
 
 ' The eternal lamp of heaven, lend us light.' 
 
 The author concludes with another high-pitched 
 tribute to the Queen. Bacon knew two things : 
 first, that he was financially supported by ' her 
 princely liberality' (see his letter to Burleigh of 
 October, 1580) ; secondly, that in praise of the 
 Queen he could not lay the paint on too thick to 
 please the vain old autocrat. 
 
 ' The Tale of Troy/ by parity of reasoning, must 
 be Bacon's work also. It was claimed to be an 
 early work, and bears internal evidence of com- 
 position at the period when Bacon was partly 
 obsessed by the pastoral and Chaucerian style in 
 which he wrote the ' Shepheard's Kalendar.' 
 
 He shows the aristocratic familiarity with 
 hawking, to be also found in Shakespeare : 
 
 1 As falcon wonts to stoop upon his prey. 1 
 
 4*"*J"V' 1*4+4*1 ^'K^ $wu~ (A*^
 
 'PYEBOARD 1 109 
 
 The last line has 
 
 ' I cannot tell, but may imagine so.' 
 
 This phrase was a favourite expression of Bacon's 
 (see chapter on the subject in Mr. Theobold's 
 ' Shakespeare Studies in Baconian Light '). 
 
 ' An Eglogue Gratulatorie ' (1589). 
 
 The Earl of Essex had been to Lisbon on his 
 own account, against the wish of the Queen, having 
 preceded Xorris and Drake. Elizabeth wrote to 
 Knollys and Drake that if Essex had reached the 
 fleet, they were to send him back safely (see 
 Devereux, ' Lives of the Earls of Essex '). Essex 
 was assured of a friendly reception on his return. 
 
 The 'Eglogue' is also in the Chaucerian style, 
 but begins with a line from Ovid's ' Amores,' 
 II., verse 1. 
 
 Bacon as ' Marlowe ' translated the ' Amores ' of 
 Ovid. 
 
 His ' Venus and Adonis,' the first-fruits of 
 * Shakespeare's' invention, was also prefaced by a 
 line from the ' Amores,' Book I., verse 15. 
 
 The poet explains why he could not include 
 Essex in the ' Farewell ' Poem. As Essex was 
 coming back in full favour with the Queen,
 
 110 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 Francis evidently thought it desirable to explain 
 matters a little, 
 
 ' But now returned to royalize his fame. 1 
 
 This gives some indication that Francis then had 
 hopes of Essex succeeding to the throne. He had 
 the same hope in 1596 (see ' View of Ireland,' 
 Spenser), upon whom ' our last hopes now rest.' 
 
 The last verse contains a line which is distinctly 
 Baconian : 
 
 ' And evening air is rheumatic and cold. 1 
 
 I venture to assert that a careful comparison of 
 the acts and life of Peele as known to us with 
 the plays and verses ascribed to him, and a careful 
 study of the internal evidence, support the assertion 
 of the cipher story that the works in Peele's name 
 were written by Bacon. 
 
 ' Pyeboard ' is the name by which Peele was 
 satirized in ' The Puritaine, or the Widow of 
 Watling Street,' 1607 a play full of cryptic 
 allusions, evidently connected with some cipher 
 story, and probably printed for that purpose only.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE PERIPATICIAX 
 
 OXE Thomas Nayshe, matriculated a poor scholar 
 at St. John's, Cambridge, in 1582 B.A. 1585- 
 1586 is credited with having commenced author 
 in London, in the year 1589, at the age of 
 twenty-one. 
 
 Like to the cases of Marlowe, Spenser, Kyd, 
 Shaksper, Greene, Peele, and Burton, his biography 
 has been several times attempted, but with in- 
 glorious results. 
 
 I sometimes wonder whether the learned bio- 
 graphers and literary men who have dealt with 
 Elizabethan men and subjects are not really 
 possessed of the real truth of matters, and yet 
 for some occult reason desire to keep the bulk 
 of us in a state of error. 
 
 If there were no bar of this kind, I should 
 imagine there could be no more interesting occupa- 
 tion for an expert in literature with good detective 
 
 111
 
 112 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 faculties than to disentangle and unfold to us the 
 remarkable methods of the Elizabethans for the 
 advancement of learning. 
 
 Thomas Nash the writer was not Nayshe the 
 son of the unbeneficed minister at Lowestoft, but 
 merely a mask, through which spoke the voice of 
 the great contriver of the reformation of English 
 language, manners, and morals Bacon. 
 
 Of the persons put forward as the dramatists of 
 the period there is some proof that Marlowe and 
 Kyd were mere copying clerks ; Greene, a broken- 
 down parson, who drifted to the stage ; and Peele, 
 a squalid literary hack. Bacon had plenty of work 
 for them in copying out parts or acting them. 
 
 As to Shaksper, we know that Emerson long ago 
 could not marry the facts of his life to his verse. 
 
 My business in this chapter is to show what the 
 Xash writings really were, and to demonstrate 
 rny affirmation as to their true authorship. 
 
 For the moment, has it ever occurred to you 
 what a curious collection the Nash writings are ? 
 Let me remind you. They consist of: 
 
 1. A budget of pamphlets in the Martin Mar- 
 prelate warfare. 
 
 2. The supposed part writing of an old and 
 short play called ' Dido,' produced in Marlowe's 
 time, and under his auspices, but evidently
 
 THE PERIPATICIAN 113 
 
 augmented and revised after Marlowe's death for 
 publication in print in 1594. 
 
 3. A play or masque called ' Summer's Last 
 Will and Testament.' 
 
 4. A group of pamphlets in a supposed warfare 
 with Gabriel Harvey, the real object of which I 
 hope to explain later. 
 
 5. ' The Anatomic of Absurdities ' (a sort of 
 satire). 
 
 6. ' Jack Wilton,' a novel of adventure, mostly 
 in Italy. 
 
 7. ' Christ's Tears over Jerusalem,' being a 
 discussion of London morals, and a call to religious 
 life. 
 
 8. ' The Terrors of the Night,' being a dis- 
 quisition on dreams. 
 
 9. ' Lenten Stuffe,' which is a brilliant account 
 of Yarmouth and the herring fishing industry. 
 
 10. A preface to ' Menaphon,' and another to 
 ' Astrophel and Stella.' 
 
 THE MARTIN MARPRELATE PAMPHLETS. 
 
 In the year 1589 the Church of England, as 
 independent of Home, had not existed long upon 
 its separate establishment of Archbishops, Bishops, 
 and clergy, having the Sovereign behind them 
 
 8
 
 114 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 as Defender of the Faith. With a large hostile 
 Catholic population and with Romish plots and 
 intrigues abundant, the English Established Church 
 in 1589 found itself confronted with a new danger 
 schism. A growing Puritan party inside and 
 outside the Church was energetically denying both 
 the authority of and necessity for the Archbishops 
 and Bishops as by law established. 
 
 Whitgift, the Archbishop of Canterbury, seems 
 to have accepted the aid of his old University 
 pupil, the brilliant young poet Francis Bacon. 
 
 Bacon acted with promptitude. An opportunity 
 had thus occurred for the exercise of his great 
 powers of invective and ridicule. By their aid he 
 sought to stifle the defection before it had gone 
 too far. His pamphlets were issued anonymously 
 and in various guises. 
 
 As ' Pasquil,' he refers to the sepia fish, which 
 vomited a black fluid like ink in order to escape 
 detection. 
 
 But he could hardly hope to be himself obscured 
 in an inky cloud. Upon some one had to rest an 
 uncertain suspicion of authorship. Nayshe, then at 
 the age of twenty-one, and fresh from Cambridge 
 for a copying job, was evidently selected. He 
 was brought upon the scene indirectly as the 
 ascribed writer of a preface to a work entitled
 
 THE PERIPATICIAN 115 
 
 ' Menaphon,' written also by Bacon in the name 
 of ' Greene.' 
 
 The author of the preface was a very learned 
 man and practised writer. From perusal of it we 
 learn that he was familiar with the works of 
 Plutarch and Pliny, Ovid and Tully, Tasso and 
 ^Esop, Seneca, Erasmus, Melanchthon, Sadolet, 
 and Plautine. 
 
 One may say that it was possible at Cambridge, 
 where only Latin was then taught, for a serving 
 scholar by the age of twenty-one to have acquired 
 some knowledge of the Latin authors. 
 
 But what are we to conclude when we find the 
 writer able to pass in learned and rapid review the 
 English authors of the period ? He discusses the 
 art of poetry with the authority of a Sidney or a 
 Harvey, and does not hesitate to ridicule and 
 condemn the verse of the learned Dr. Stanihurst. 
 To the Italians Petrarche, Tasso, and Celiano he 
 can oppose Chaucer, Lydgate, and Gower (favourites, 
 by the way, of ' Greene ' and * Spenser '). He 
 shares with Bacon and ' Marlowe ' a strong anti- 
 pathy to Peter Ramus, a contemporary French 
 logician. He is able to assign to George Peele the 
 authorship of the anonymous pastoral play, ' The 
 Arraignment of Paris.' He hints obscurely that he 
 is not the ' Pasquil ' of the Marprelate pamphlets. 
 
 82
 
 116 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 The preface has been read and quoted for almost 
 anything but its true inwardness. In inviting its 
 examination afresh I ask attention to this, the 
 only extract I shall make : 
 
 ' I will not denie but in scholler-like matters of 
 controversie a quicker style may pass as commend- 
 able/ 
 
 Plenty of internal indication of the true author 
 is to be gathered from the Marprelate pamphlets. 
 At p. 121 of ' Pasquil's Return,' a cleverly managed 
 hint of advice to the Queen is introduced. Bacon 
 is to be found, both in his own name and some of 
 those he assumed, taking opportunity to show the 
 Queen and her Ministers the best way to deal with 
 political questions of the moment. 
 
 Again, in 'Martin Month's Mind' (1589), at 
 p. 171, he discusses a point which the cipher 
 story shows very much interested him viz., ' that 
 a son may be no bastard though perhaps base 
 begotten.' At p. 189 he betrays a sound know- 
 ledge of the law of inheritance ; at p. 217 of 
 Italian. At p. 219 we have that curious expres- 
 sion ' Her Ma,' for Her Majesty, which, when it 
 appeared in Mrs. Gallop's decipher, excited much 
 cheap derision. On p. 220 is the word 'Essay.' 
 In dedicating his Essays to Prince Henry, Bacon 
 w r rote, ' The word is late, but the thing is ancient.'
 
 THE PERIPATICIAN 117 
 
 THE PLAYS. 
 
 ' Dido ' is a dull sort of play, freely translated 
 from or founded upon the second and fourth books 
 of the ' ^Eneid.' 
 
 It appears to have been acted by the children of 
 Her Majesty's Chapel on some Court occasion, and 
 was doubtless composed shortly after the produc- 
 tion of Dr. Gaeger's Latin play of the same name, 
 at Oxford, in June, 1583. Performed as having 
 been written by ' Marlowe,' its augmentations and 
 additions when printed after Marlowe's death, were 
 conveniently ascribed to ' Nash.' 
 
 * Summer's Last Will ' was performed at Whit- 
 gift's palace, at Croydon, in 1592, at a date 
 subsequent to September 24 (the last day of 
 summer), on the return of Queen Elizabeth from 
 one of her Progresses. The evidence is that the 
 Queen moved from Greenwich to Nonsuch Palace, 
 near Epsom, on July 27. On August 21 she was 
 entertained at Bisham, the estate of Lady Russell 
 (sister to Lady Ann Bacon), and next at Quarendon 
 Park, near Aylesbury, the seat of the old champion 
 at tilt, Sir Henry Leigh. By September 12 the 
 Queen had reached Sudeley Castle, near Cheltenham, 
 where the Lord Keeper's secretary reported that 
 the plague was getting worse in London.
 
 118 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 She then went to Bath, then to Oxford on Septem- 
 ber 22, and Rycote on her way home on the 28th. 
 If the play is not from the Baconian mint, then I 
 have read in vain. We have the same sort of 
 weak puns, the old familiar allusions to money 
 and muck, to Orpheus and his lute, to the song 
 of the dying swan, the swinishness of drunkenness, 
 and to the baseness of the rabble. 
 
 There is probably one sly jest at his own plight : 
 { Saint Francis, a holy saint, and never had any 
 money.' 
 
 About the first week in August Francis, nervous 
 of the plague, had bolted from London to Twicken- 
 ham Park with a few friends. From thence on 
 August 14 he wrote to invite another friend, 
 Mr. Phillips, decipherer to the Foreign Office, to 
 join him. He wrote : ' I have excused myself of 
 this Progress [meaning the Queen's Progress] if 
 that be to excuse to take liberty where it is not 
 given.' 
 
 I infer that he was expected to go the round as 
 of course. But Francis was a busy and probably 
 a tired man, and having furnished the two little 
 displays performed at Lady Russell's and Sir 
 Henry Leigh's respectively, and having written 
 and revised to date the more important masque or 
 play for Whitgift, already mentioned, was doubt-
 
 THE PERIPATICIAN 119 
 
 less glad, like many another dramatic author on 
 ' first nights,' to be reported as not in the house. 
 Mr. Spedding seems to have thought that Francis 
 referred to an invitation to Bisham. But that is 
 not the true reading of Phillip's letter. Moreover, 
 Hoby's invitation was sent to Antony Bacon at 
 Gorhambury, and a very long journey would have 
 been necessary in order to make Francis aware 
 of it. 
 
 The l Isle of Dogs ' is another play not now 
 extant. It may be urged that Bacon would not 
 have allowed Nayshe to be imprisoned for the 
 offence which the play gave to the authorities. 
 The mischief, however, was due to what was 
 added. 
 
 According to ' Lenten Stuffe ' (1599), he states : 
 ' An imperfit Embrio, I may well call it, for I 
 having begun but the induction and first act of it, 
 the other foure acts, without my consent, or the 
 least guesse of my drift or scope, by the players 
 were supplied, which bred both their trouble and 
 mine too.' 
 
 From Henslowe's Diary it appears that Nayshe 
 was locked up and soon afterwards released, 
 probably at the instance of an intervention by 
 Francis Bacon. If Nayshe himself wrote the 
 remaining four acts, and the quality of his work
 
 120 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 was no better than shown in the short verse called 
 ' The Valentine,' unearthed by Dr. Grosart from 
 the Temple Library, he may have deserved his 
 punishment on literary grounds alone. Possibly, 
 after ten years' copying in Bacon's scrivenery, he 
 may have tried his hand at original work. The 
 fact, however, that the ' Isle of Dogs ' fragment is 
 mentioned on the cover of the Northumberland 
 manuscript a document evidently emanating from 
 the possession of Bacon or some person in his 
 employ, probably Davies is a further proof of 
 the true authorship of the ' Nash ' writings. 
 Davies may not have known of ' Nash ' otherwise 
 than as a subordinate, or, as he puts it, inferior, 
 player. 
 
 THE GABRIEL HARVEY CONTROVERSY. 
 
 The late Dr. Grosart took this controversy 
 seriously, and was very severe on Gabriel Harvey. 
 I venture entirely to disagree with him. The 
 
 / o 
 
 Nash- Harvey pamphlets were merely a continua- 
 tion of the warfare of pleasantries which Bacon, in 
 1580, as ' Immerito,' at a later date as ' Spenser,' 
 and afterwards as ' Greene,' had waged in print 
 with his old friend Gabriel Harvey. The reason 
 these pamphlets were printed is tolerably clear to 
 me. In the scheme for the improvement of the
 
 THE PERIPATICIAN 121 
 
 English language, in which these two co-operated, 
 word - making played a very important part. 
 Reference need only be made to the ' Shakespeare 
 Symphony,' by Mr. Harold Bayley, where it will 
 be seen what a large number of new words are 
 first found in the pages of ' Nash.' 
 
 New words had to be unobtrusively sown in 
 print. Some of them would, no doubt, catch on, 
 and become part of the language ; but there was 
 no other or better way of bringing this about than 
 using them oneself as though they existed, and 
 were not new coinings. 
 
 It is interesting to observe how deferential 
 Harvey was, and how he tried to avoid being 
 severe on Bacon. 
 
 It was only towards the latter end of the 
 pamphleteering that Harvey really let himself go. 
 
 ' Pierce Pennilesse ' was one of the first of the 
 4 Nash ' portion of these pamphlets. 
 
 Licensed August, 1592, it was printed a little 
 later. In the preface he states ' I am the 
 plague's prisoner in the country as yet.' Also 
 that ' the feare of infection detained mee with my 
 Lord in the Countrey.' Nayshe would doubtless 
 be with Bacon, his employer, at Twickenham at 
 this time. He complains that Greene's ' Groats- 
 worth of Wit ' (not on the register until September)
 
 122 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 was alleged to be ' o my doing.' Here I pause to 
 point out to the learned Shakespearian societies 
 that three hundred years ago the printing o a 
 man's name on the title-page of a book as being 
 the author thereof was not accepted as conclusive 
 on the subject. The writer of ' Pierce Pennilesse ' 
 holds, at p. 43, Bacon's objection to the practice of 
 face-painting. At p. 49 he writes of ' Armadoes 
 that, like a high wood, overshadowed the shrubs 
 of our low ships.' Bacon, in his translation of 
 Psalm civ., has: 'The greater navies look like 
 walking woods.' At p. 88 he defends the pro- 
 duction of stage plays, ' for the subject of them (for 
 the most part) is borrowed out of our English 
 Chronicles, wherein our forefathers' valiant acts, 
 that have lain long buried in rusty brass and 
 worm-eaten books, are revived.' The incident on 
 p. 134 is amusing. The ' Faerie Queene ' (ascribed 
 to Spenser, but, according to the cipher story, 
 claimed by Bacon) had appeared in print the 
 previous year (1591), with sonnets to a host of 
 courtiers and Court beauties. But poor Earl 
 Derby, who had only recently succeeded to the 
 title, had been overlooked. ' Nash ' supplies the 
 omission ! At p. 238 he refers to the reason why 
 Harvey had imputed to Greene that he had a 
 bastard son, ' Infortunatus.' He pretends that
 
 THE PERIPATICIAN 123 
 
 Harvey had been in the Fleet Prison, and jests: 
 ' Thy joys were in the fleeting.' At p. 261 there 
 is an interesting bit of biography. Referring to 
 an expression of Harvey, ' Nash ' remarks : ' A per 
 see, A can doe it : tempt not his clemency too 
 much. A per se, A ? Passion of God, how came 
 I by that name ? My Godfather Gabriel gave it 
 me, and I must not refuse it.' 
 
 The explanation is that the term was applied by 
 Harvey to ' Immerito' (Bacon) in verses printed in 
 1580, ' Two Letters of Notable Contents.' ' Nash ' 
 jocularly sought to evade the suggestion, and said 
 that the verses were a libel, intended for the Earl 
 of Oxford. As a matter of fact, they were very 
 complimentary. 
 
 I do not mean to assert that Harvey and ' Nash ' 
 printed their invectives solely as a medium for 
 introducing new words. It evidently gave them 
 great pleasure. Harvey enjoyed it, otherwise we 
 should not find him writing in ' Pierce's Superero- 
 gation ': ' Alacke nothinge livelie and mightie 
 till his frisking penne began to play the sprite 
 of the buttry and to teach his mother tongue such 
 lusty gambolds.' 
 
 Again, ' he will flatly denie and confute even 
 because I say it, and only because in a frolic and 
 dowtie jollitie he will have the last word of me.'
 
 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 Harvey was fond of associating ' Euphues ' or 
 'Lyly' with 'Greene.' The terms ' greene or 
 motley ' or ' greene motley ' occur. Towards the 
 finish of the ' Supererogation ' Harvey hints at 
 ' Nash,' ' Lyly,' and ' Greene ' being three faces in 
 one hood, and as being the three-headed Cerberus. 
 This recalls a line : 
 
 ' And make myself a motley to the view. 1 
 
 The testimony of Harvey alone, though given 
 slyly and indirectly, is strong proof that Bacon, 
 ' Immerito,' ' Lyly,' ' Greene,' and ' Nash ' were 
 one and the same person. 
 
 ' ANATOMIE OF ABSUKDITIE.' 
 
 This booklet was printed in 1589, and is really 
 part of the series of ' Anatomies ' commenced by 
 Francis in the name of ' Greene.' It was dedicated 
 to Sir Charles Blunt, with whom Bacon would be 
 intimate. 
 
 It indicates that it was written in 1586, when 
 Nayshe, the ascribed author, would be a youth of 
 eighteen at Cambridge. He refers to circumstances 
 which had compelled his wit to wander abroad in 
 ' satyricall disguise.' Further on he remarks that 
 Proteus is still Proteus, though girt in the apparel 
 of Pactolus. He eternizes the praise of Queen
 
 THE PERIPATICIAN 125 
 
 Elizabeth, and describes how a company of gentle- 
 men had united in praise of Sir Charles Blunt's 
 perfections, and that he (the author) had a desire 
 to be suppliant with him in some subject of wit. 
 We meet with the term ' idle pens,' which also 
 occurs in a letter from Francis to Anthony Bacon. 
 He refers to a loyal Lucretia and the inconstancy 
 of Venus, showing that the subjects of ' Lucrece ' 
 and ' Venus and Adonis,' a few years afterwards 
 put forth in the name of ' Shakespeare,' were then 
 revolving in his mind. 
 
 The whole work demonstrates the facility of a 
 practised writer, and the learning of a man deeply 
 read in all available literature. At p. 39 he declares 
 himself a professed Peripatician, mixing profit with 
 pleasure, and precepts of doctrine with delightful 
 invention. 
 
 1 Yet these men condemn them of lasciviousness, 
 vanity and curiosity, who, under feigned stories, 
 include many profitable moral precepts.' 
 
 Have we not in this passage the thesis and root 
 plan of the Shakespeare plays ? 
 
 Even ' Nash ' holds the notion of the ' pearl in 
 the head of the Toade.' 
 
 ' Which like the Toad ugly and venomous, 
 Wears yet a precious jewel in its head/ 
 
 At p. 48 he objects, as did Bacon, to the 
 
 Jf 
 '":>'. *'..'. ::'':' * ' ' ' ' ' -' 
 
 tr / f
 
 126 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 enclosure of common lands, and on p. 60 describes, 
 almost in Bacon's words, his theory of the action 
 of wine on the brain. 
 
 * CHRIST'S TEARS OVER JERUSALEM,' 1593. 
 
 According to ' Have with you Saffron Walden,' 
 ' Nash,' by whom I, of course, mean Bacon, spent 
 the Christmas of 1592-93 in the Isle of Wight, 
 at the house of Sir George Carey, who there resided 
 with his wife Elizabeth, and his only child, a 
 daughter, who bore her mother's Christian name. 
 Sir George was eldest son of the first Lord Hunsdon, 
 cousin to the Queen, and a visit from Francis, 
 from what we know of his peculiar position, was 
 a natural incident. ' Christ's Tears ' was dedicated 
 to Lady Elizabeth Carey, while ' Terrors of the 
 Night ' was next year dedicated to her daughter. 
 
 ' Christ's Tears ' is interesting as showing the 
 profound influence for sadness that the plague 
 raging at the period of its writing had upon the 
 sensitive nature of young Francis. This is also 
 seen in the serious tenor of his letter to Burleigh 
 and o the ' Greene ' Repentance series, apparently 
 written later in the year 1592, at a time when the 
 plague was beginning to be alarming. 
 
 The title of ' Christ's Tears ' was probably sug- 
 gested to him by a carving in mother-of-pearl in
 
 THE PERIPATICIAN 127 
 
 the hall at Hampton Court Palace, where the Queen 
 and Court were then in residence, and called the 
 ' History of Christ's Passion.' In the same way 
 'Lucrece' (1594) may have been prompted by the 
 picture at Hampton Court entitled ' The True 
 Lucretia.' (See report by Hentzner.) 
 
 At p. 122 of 'Christ's Tears' we find Bacon's 
 favourite Orpheus legend alluded to. At p. 138 
 there is a death-bed description like that of Falstaff 
 (the play being written later). At p. 196 is a 
 part of a sentence, viz. : ' Many a time and oft ' 
 which a year or two later is used by Shylock 
 in * The Merchant of Venice.' At p. 216 is another 
 rendering of : 
 
 4 For the apparel oft proclaims the man. 1 
 That is to say : 
 ' Apparel more than anything betrayeth his wearer's mind. 1 
 
 At p. 245 he advised the giving to hospitals 
 and colleges, a matter in which Bacon took much 
 interest, and which shortly afterwards became one 
 of the rules of the Rosicrucian Brotherhood. At 
 p. 255 there is Bacon's favourite reference to 
 Briareus, with his hundred hands.
 
 128 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 'JACK WILTON,' 1594; 'TERRORS OF THE NIGHT/ 
 1594; 'LENTEN STUFFE,* 1599. 
 
 ' Jack Wilton,' like ' Lucrece,' was dedicated to 
 the young Earl of Southampton, at that time being 
 trained at Gray's Inn, where Bacon had his London 
 residence. This novel of adventure in Italy, taken 
 in conjunction w r ith the Marprelate pamphlet, ' An 
 Almond for a Parrot' (1589), which I think Baco,n 
 wrote, and which also refers to a travel in Italy, 
 brings me to the notion that possibly Francis 
 Bacon visited Italy in the autumn and winter of 
 1588. He might probably have been sent on a 
 private political mission to the Venetian Kepublic, 
 just after the failure of the Spanish Armada. There 
 he would obtain the local knowledge of certain 
 Italian cities, so soon afterwards to be utilized with 
 effect in ' The Merchant of Venice ' and other plays. 
 Nothing of importance was printed by Bacon in 
 any of his pen-names at this period. True he 
 W 7 as elected M.P. for Liverpool in November, but 
 his personal attendance was quite unnecessary. 
 The Parliament did not sit until February 4, 
 1588-89, and Bacon's first appearance there was 
 on the 1 7th of that month. 
 
 At p. 120 of 'Jack Wilton' is a reference to the 
 music of the spheres, a subject in which Bacon
 
 THE PERIPATICIAN 129 
 
 was interested, and which in the following year 
 was so beautifully rendered in ' The Merchant of 
 Venice ' : 
 
 ' There's not the smallest orb which thou beholdest 
 But in his motion there an angel sings, 
 Still quiring to the young-eyed Cherubins. 
 Such harmony is in immortal souls, 
 But whilst this muddy vesture of decay 
 Doth grossly close it in we cannot hear it/ 
 
 In ' Lenten Stuffe,' at p. 234, is the long word 
 ' Honorificabilitudinitatibus,' which came from a 
 Venetian source, and which also appeared in print 
 in 1598 in 'Love's Labour Lost.' At p. 292 the 
 author remarks that those who were present at the 
 arraignment of Lopus (Dr. Lopez, who sought to 
 poison the Queen) ' I am sure will bear me record.' 
 This arraignment took place on January 21, 
 1593-94. Mr. Spedding finds from a letter that 
 Essex was present, but he cannot record anyone 
 else. But we know that Bacon was frequently 
 called in to cases of the kind. He wrote a full 
 report of it, the terms of which give the impres- 
 sion that he was actually present. One can hardly 
 understand how Xayshe could have been admitted 
 on such an important occasion. 
 
 ' The Terrors of the Night/ 1594, is a disquisition 
 upon the subject of dreams. Bacon was admittedly 
 tauitirwy ' Ivu***^, * 9
 
 130 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 a bad sleeper. So was the writer of the ' Shakespeare 
 Sonnets.' This work is dedicated to Elizabeth, Sir 
 George Carey's daughter and heiress. Those in- 
 terested in discussing the persons involved in the 
 ' Shakespeare Sonnets ' may not have noticed that 
 in 1594-95 the match between this lady and Lord 
 Herbert was broken off by the latter's father, Earl 
 Pembroke, upon a question of dowry. 
 
 In ' Terrors of the Night' allusion is made to a 
 visit made by the author in that year to a place 
 situate in rather low marshy ground about some 
 three-score miles from London. Bacon was that 
 year at Huntingdon, which in distance and, I 
 think, in situation answers the description. The 
 months do not fit one is stated to have been in 
 February and the other in July ; but ' he who 
 would be secret must be a dissembler in some 
 degree,' said Bacon. In the ' Terrors ' the author 
 discusses in a preliminary way the effect on the 
 brain of the secretions from the liver, a subject 
 at a later date discussed very extensively in the 
 'Anatomy of Melancholy,' a compilation the author- 
 ship (or, what was possibly intended, the chief 
 editorship) of which the cipher story claims for 
 Bacon.
 
 THE PERIPATICIAN 131 
 
 THE PREFACE TO ' ASTROPHEL AXD STELLA,' 1591. 
 
 Believing, as I do, and having proved, as I 
 think I have to a very large extent, that Bacon 
 was ' Immerito,' and was also ' Nash,' I venture 
 to state that no one of the few men originally 
 associated with Sir Philip Sidney in the Areopagus 
 for the reform of English literature was more fitted 
 to write the preface to the appearance in print of 
 this small book of verse by his dead friend. 
 
 Sir Philip Sidney died in 1586, when Nayshe 
 would be a stripling of eighteen serving meals to 
 the better circumstanced scholars of his college. 
 
 Let me conclude by an extract from the preface : 
 
 'Deare Astrophel (Sidney) that in the ashes of 
 thy love livest againe like the Phoenix. might 
 thy bodie (as thy name) live againe likewise here 
 amongst us : but the earth, the mother of mor- 
 talitie, hath snatched thee too soone into her 
 chilled colde armes, and will not let thee by any 
 meanes be drawne from her deadly imbrace; and 
 thy devine Soule carried on an angel's wings to. 
 heaven, is installed in Hermes' place sole prolocutor 
 to the Gods.' 
 
 These are the words of an affectionate friend. 
 They are the words, too, of a poet. I submit, 
 with much respect to those who may think they 
 
 92
 
 132 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 know better, that the friend and poet was Francis 
 Bacon. 
 
 The late Ignatius Donnelly was not far out 
 when he wrote : ' We are in the presence of an 
 unbounded intellectual activity, a Proteus that 
 sought as many disguises as nature itself.' 
 ' Nash ' was one of them.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 CHRISTOPHER SLY 
 
 CERTAIN critics have suggested that the well- 
 known play of ' Hamlet ' is somewhat autobio- 
 graphical. I propose here to discuss the question 
 whether the biliterai cipher story is justified in 
 claiming it, and a number of other plays and 
 poems, as the writings of Francis Bacon. 
 
 Having regard to the peculiar sensitiveness of 
 the English race to any disturbance of their affec- 
 tionate reverence for the ascribed author in this 
 case, I will endeavour, as far as possible, to confine 
 myself to the question of the probabilities of 
 authorship of this single play. 
 
 The ascribed author was born at the village of 
 Stratford-on-Avon about April 26, 1564, the date 
 of his baptism. His parents were in a moderate 
 position, though his father, and probably his 
 mother, was unable to write. About 1582 he 
 married the daughter of a farmer, the lady being
 
 134 EUPHUES THE PEIUPATICIAN 
 
 several years his senior. By her he had children, 
 the last two being baptized on February 2, 1585. 
 He was next noted as appearing in 1594, 1598, 
 1600, and 1603 as a stage-player in or near 
 London. In 1603 he was one of others licensed to 
 act at the Globe Theatre. In 1605, one Phillips, 
 an actor, left by will, ' To my fellowe William 
 Shakespeare a thirty shilling piece in gold.' 
 
 In 1610 (according to a petition from two 
 brothers Burbage dated 1635) he was one of other 
 ' deserving men ' players employed to act at the 
 Blackfriars Theatre after certain boy players had 
 left. Three years later he bought a house in the 
 vicinity of the theatre. Between 1600 and his 
 death on April 23, 1616, he made considerable 
 purchases of lands, houses, and tithes at Stratford, 
 grew corn, sold malt, and lent money. His will 
 was a careful document, giving his various posses- 
 sions to his relatives, and bequeathing to ' my 
 fellows Hemynge, Burbage and Cundell l 6s. 8d. 
 apiece to buy them rings.' There is very little 
 doubt of his ability to read, as there exist letters 
 addressed to him. His signatures to the deed of 
 purchase of the house at Blackfriars are weak and 
 indistinct. Those to his will are worse, but that 
 may have been owing to illness. Nothing in his 
 handwriting has been preserved save the two
 
 CHRISTOPHER SLY 135 
 
 signatures to the deed, the three to the will, and the 
 words ' By me,' also on the will. He left neither 
 letters, manuscripts, nor library. His daughter 
 Judith for her signature made a mark. According 
 to the Stratford archives, the spelling in the will, 
 the appearance of his signatures, and the petition 
 of the Burbages, his name was spelt and pro- 
 nounced by those who knew him intimately as 
 S/iasper or Sha&spere. The spelling in the 
 Phillips will, which was made in London, and that 
 in the body of the London deed, follows the 
 spelling of the name upon the plays published in 
 London. 
 
 Rightly to understand the position, young 
 Francis Bacon was, in June, 1593, driven to find 
 some fresh person under cover of whose name the 
 poem of ' Venus and Adonis ' (eventually printed 
 with a dedication by ' Wm. Shakespeare ' in July, 
 1593) could appear. 
 
 Greene, one of his masks, was dead ; Marlowe, 
 another mask, had just been slain ; ' Kyd ' was in 
 trouble with the Star Chamber. 
 
 The ' Venus ' was unsuited to the ' Spenser ' 
 class of poems, and under Peele's name he had 
 just printed another poem. Moreover, he had then 
 particular need of a person to supply Marlowe's 
 place as a * go-between ' from himself to the men
 
 136 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 ])layers. He appears to have decided to experi- 
 ment with Shakspere, then an actor in the Queen's 
 company. It was not difficult for the poet to reshape 
 the actor's name. We know from the October 
 Glosse to the ' Shepheard's Kalendar ' (1579), from 
 ' Lyly's ' ' Campaspe' (1584), and several cantos of 
 the 'Faerie Queene' (1590), that the notion of Shake 
 the Speare was quite familiar to him. . . . 
 
 \Ve know, too, his punning habit how in 
 1 Spenser ' Summer's heat is made to pun with 
 Somerset, Debon's shayre with Devonshire, and so 
 on. The transformation of the name was a very 
 natural poetic device. Just as Amleth became 
 Hamlet, and Porcie became Portia, so Shaksper 
 was transmuted to Shakespeare. Gabriel Harvey 
 evidently had some doubt as to the suitability 
 of the new recruit. For in his ' Sonnet of the 
 wonderful year 1593 ' he thus alluded to the death 
 of Marlowe (Tamburlaine) and the bargain with 
 his successor: 
 
 * Weep Powles. Thy Tamburlaine voutsafes to die. 
 
 ISEnvoy. 
 
 A huger miracle remains behinde, 
 A second Shakerley rashe-swashe to binde/ 
 
 I have, I think, fairly mentioned every material 
 fact in the life of the actor Shakspere as bearing 
 upon the question of authorship. I leave others
 
 CHRISTOPHER SLY 137 
 
 to debate the contemporary allusions, such as they 
 are, and the accumulated internal evidence. I 
 affirm, however, that the Ben Jonson testimony 
 in the Shakspere folio of 1G23 is clever bluff, 
 discounted after his death in his 'Discoveries'; and 
 that the only local Warwickshire colour was pro- ; 
 vided in the allegory of Christopher Sly prefixed 
 to the 'Taming of the Shrew,' in ivkich a guzziirxj 
 tinker acts for the time being as substitute for the 
 true lord. 
 
 No word can fairly be said to the discredit of the 
 actor William Shakspere. He had the misfortune 
 to be tempted for reward to allow plays and 
 poems to be published in his name. Beyond this 
 he made no attempt to perpetuate the illusion. 
 He behaved as an actor, and subsequently, as a 
 retired actor, spent his money upon his family, 
 and doubtless would have turned in his grave 
 could he have learnt that every known mistake 
 of his life had been canvassed and discussed, and 
 that he had had vicariously to bear the adula- 
 tions of the wise men and women of East and 
 West, 
 
 Having enumerated some important considera- 
 tions { in the way of a conclusion that the ascribed 
 was the true author of ' Hamlet,' I once more ask 
 the patience of my readers while I state as well as
 
 138 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 I can the case for the true author, Bacon, who 
 planned for a period to remain ' concealed.' 
 
 The play of ' Hamlet ' was, as many are well 
 aware, founded upon a French story narrated by 
 Belleforest in his ' Histoires Tragiques,' printed in 
 1571, but not translated into English until 1608. 
 The position of ' Amleth ' in the French story 
 would naturally appeal to young Francis Bacon, 
 with whose own condition it had much in common. 
 The ' Histoires ' would be in regular circulation in 
 France about the time of his sojourn there. It 
 is not surprising, therefore, to find, apart from 
 the cipher story, that it was one of the earliest 
 plays known to have been performed by the 
 men actors in the employment of the Earl of 
 Leicester. 
 
 Existing foreign documents show that in 1585 
 the King of Denmark took into his service a com- 
 pany of English actors. 
 
 This is confirmed in general terms in Heywood's 
 'Apology for Actors' (1612), which informs us 
 that the actors were commended to the King of 
 Denmark by the Earl of Leicester. What more 
 natural than that, at a time when the Low Countries 
 were being assisted by the Protestant Queen of 
 England to hold out against the Roman Catholic 
 domination of Spain, an attempt should have
 
 CHRISTOPHER SLY 139 
 
 been made to placate a neighbouring King with 
 a play dealing with events of ancient Danish 
 history ? 
 
 Dr. Brandes is able to affirm that in 1585 a 
 company of English players performed ' Hamlet ' 
 in the courtyard of the Town Hall of Elsinore. 
 
 This company was transferred in October, 1586, 
 to the Duke of Saxony, and after some few months 
 returned to England. 
 
 The play was first printed in England in the 
 year 1603, and is thereon stated to have been per- 
 formed ' in the Cittie of London, as also in the two 
 Universities of Cambridge and Oxford and else- 
 where.' 
 
 It was again printed in 1604, with additions and 
 alterations. Both quartos were published under 
 the auspices of Nicholas Ling, protected by an 
 entry in the Stationers' Register of 1602. The 
 suggestion that the 1603 was a pirated copy is 
 inconsistent with the fact that Ling protected and 
 printed both. 
 
 ' Hamlet ' is alluded to in the preface to 
 ' Menaphon,' 1589. From an entry by Gabriel 
 Harvey in one of his books, under date 1598, 
 'Hamlet' was then (1598) known as a 'Shake- 
 speare ' play. ' The Spanish Tragedy ' and parts 
 of the 1603 'Hamlet' have, in the opinion of
 
 140 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 Mr. Boas, much internal indication of some 
 common authorship, which led that gentleman 
 to conclude that an early state of ' Hamlet ' was 
 written by Kyd. According to Ben Jonson, ' The 
 Spanish Tragedy ' may have been played as early 
 as 1584. This would exclude Kyd. Mr. Boas 
 accordingly gives up the notion that the ' Hamlet ' 
 of 1585 could have been written by Kyd. So we 
 are asked to fall back upon an assumption that a 
 still earlier ' Hamlet' of 1585 was written by some 
 other Englishman who could read the French o 
 the foundation story. Admit that unknown 
 Englishman to have been Bacon, and the difficulty 
 is removed. 
 
 A concealed author who had not in 1589 per- 
 fected his arrangements for using the names of 
 certain other people would have been likely to have 
 sought to make mystifying suggestions as to the 
 authorship of certain anonymous plays for men 
 actors which in 1589 had become rather numerous. 
 Hence, I think, arose the obscure hints as to the 
 authorship of ' Tamburlaine/ ' Taming of a Shrew/ 
 'Edward III./ 'The Spanish Tragedy/ 'Henry VI.' 
 (Third Part), ' Richard, Duke of York/ and 
 'Hamlet/ which in 1589 proceeded from 'Mena- 
 phon ' and its preface.
 
 CHRISTOPHER SLY 141 
 
 That the 'Hamlet' of 1603 contained much of 
 the original play may be established in several 
 ways. First, by Mr. Boas's careful comparison of 
 the text of ' Hamlet' and ' The Spanish Tragedy.' 
 Secondly, by the fact that the 1603 Quarto agrees 
 in certain respects with the German play, a transla- 
 tion probably made when the play was produced 
 in Germany in 1586. If, upon the facts, Bacon 
 wrote in the name of * Lyly,' then the advice of 
 the Lord Chamberlain to his son, and the sugges- 
 tion of suicide with a bare bodkin, had already 
 passed through his mind when he wrote the two 
 parts of ' Euphues ' in 1579 and 1580. 
 
 The soliloquies of ' Hamlet ' are consistent with 
 the state of mind of an unacknowledged son, a 
 man wholly in a dilemma, with no apparent way 
 out. 
 
 There are other indications. Mr. \V. L. Rushton 
 is able to show that certain statutes of Henry VIII. 
 and Edward VI. concerning the succession to 
 the throne of England were before the mind of 
 the author of * Hamlet,' and utilized by him in 
 the play. 
 
 No man other than a lawyer, such as young 
 Francis Bacon was, would be likely to turn for 
 dramatic inspiration to the statutes of the realm.
 
 142 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 It would be exceedingly unusual even at the 
 present day. On the cipher story revelation as to 
 Bacon's true parentage those statutes had a very 
 strong interest to him. 
 
 I cannot understand how a law stationer's 
 assistant, such as Kyd was, could have even looked 
 at the statutes, though not entirely impossible. 
 On the ' Kyd ' hypothesis we have difficulty, first, 
 as to his possible access to the 'Histoires Tragiques' 
 of 1571, and next as to his ability to read them. 
 Kyd, moreover, must have possessed a know- 
 ledge not common to scriveners, to have attempted 
 to make play in the grave-digging scene with 
 the intricacies of ' Hales v. Pettit,' reported in 
 Norman-French in 1578. To a young barrister 
 like Bacon, skilled in both French and English, 
 ' Hales v. Pettit ' would have been a most in- 
 teresting law moot. Kyd died in 1594 ; but in 
 the 1604 Quarto the 'Hales v. Pettit' law points 
 are set out stitt more elaborately! At that date 
 Bacon was a most matured and capable lawyer. 
 ' I alter ever while I add, so that nothing is 
 finished until all be finished,' was a sentence 
 in one of his writings. The argument for Kyd, 
 based upon similarities, breaks down directly it 
 is perceived that ' Kyd ' was only a mask for 
 Bacon. ft v w'
 
 CHRISTOPHER SLY 143 
 
 ' Hamlet's ' affectionate references to Yorick, the 
 King's je&ter, have more than once been discussed 
 by the critics. Mr. Pemberton in a recent article 
 has, I think, succeeded in establishing that Hey- 
 wood, once jester to Henry VIII. , was the person 
 referred to. 
 
 ' Alas poor Yorick, I knew him well, 
 
 ***** 
 He hath borne me on his back a thousand times." 1 
 
 The association of the Queen's 'little Lord 
 Keeper' with her father's old jester, doubtless 
 continued in her household as an honoured and 
 privileged old servitor, would have been a natural 
 one. The boy and old man had opportunity for 
 many a romp together. 
 
 Alterations in the different editions of ' Hamlet ' 
 bear out the cipher claim that Bacon was the true 
 author of the play. 
 
 The 1603 Quarto has the line 
 
 ' Doubt that the earth is fire.' 
 
 In 1604 Bacon wrote a tract urging that the 
 earth was a cold body. 
 
 In the 1604 Quarto the line is 
 
 * Doubt that the stars are fire.'
 
 144 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 In the 1604 Quarto the movement of the 
 tides is attributed to the influence of the moon. 
 
 In 1616 Bacon came to a different opinion. 
 From ' Hamlet/ in the Folio of 1623, the reference 
 to the influence of the moon is (says Mr. Edwin 
 Reed) omitted. 
 
 The 1604 'Hamlet' agreed with Bacon's belief 
 that there could not be motion without sense. In 
 the 1623 ' De Augmentis' Bacon changed his 
 opinion. From the 'Hamlet' of the 1623 Folio 
 the passage associating sense with motion is 
 omitted. 
 
 I now give a few illustrations of identities 
 of thought in passages from Bacon's acknowledged 
 work and passages in ' Hamlet.' 
 
 Since all the roads point to Rome, we shall hope 
 to get there some time. 
 
 PARALLELS. 
 
 * For if the sun breeds maggots" in a dead dog being a 
 god-kissing carrion/ Hamlet, 1604. 
 
 ' Aristotle dogmatically assigned the cause of generation 
 to the sun.' BACON : Novum Organum, 1608. 
 
 ' A silence in the heavens, the rack stood still, 
 The bold winds speechless and the orb below 
 As hush as death ; anon, the dreadful thunder 
 Doth rend the region? 
 
 Hamlet, 1604.
 
 CHRISTOPHER SLY 145 
 
 ' The winds in the upper region (which move the clouds 
 above what we call the rack, and are not perceived below), 
 pass without noise. BACON : Sylva Sylvarum, 1622. 
 
 ' Assume a virtue if you have it not. 1 Hamlet, 1604. 
 
 ' Whatsoever a want a man hath, he must see that he 
 pretend the virtue that shadoweth it. 1 BACON : Advance- 
 ment of Learning, 1605. 
 
 ' From the tables 
 Of my memory 111 wipe away all saws of books. 1 
 
 Hamlet, 1603. 
 
 ' Tables of the mind differ from the common tables 
 . . . you will scarcely wipe out the former records unless 
 you shall have inscribed the new. 1 BACON : Redargutio 
 Phil 
 
 ' Though this be madness, yet there is method in it.' 
 Hamlet, 1604. 
 
 ' They were only taking pains to show a kind of method 
 and discretion in their madness. 1 BACON : Novum 
 Organum, 1608. 
 
 ' POLONIUS. What do you read, my lord ? 
 HAMLET. Words, words, words. 
 POLONIUS. What is the matter, my lord P 1 
 
 Hamlet, 1604. 
 
 ' Here, then, is the first distemper of learning, when 
 men study words and not matter. 1 BACON : Advance- 
 ment of Learning, 1605. 
 
 10
 
 146 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 ' There's such divinity doth hedge a king 
 That treason dares not look on. 1 
 
 Hamlet, 1603. 
 
 4 God hath implanted such a majesty in the face of a 
 prince that no private man dare approach the person of 
 his sorereign with a traitorous intent/ BACON : Speech 
 at Trial of Essex, 1601. 
 
 ' HAMLET. Denmark's a prison. 
 ROSENCRANTZ. Then is the world one." 1 
 
 Hamlet, 1623. 
 
 ' The world is a prison. 1 BACON : Letter to Buckingham, 
 1621. 
 
 < I will find 
 
 Where truth is hid, though it were hid indeed 
 Within the centre.' 
 
 Hamlet, 1603. 
 
 ' The truth of nature lies hid in certain deep mines and 
 caves/ BACON: Advancement of Learning, 1605. 
 
 ' This majestical roof fretted with golden fire. 1 
 
 Hamlet, 1604. 
 
 'For if that great workmaster had been of a human 
 disposition he would cast the stars into some pleasant and 
 beautiful works and orders like the frets in the roofs of 
 houses. 1 BACON : Advancement of Learning, 1605. 
 
 * The Cyclops hammers fall 
 On Mars his armor forg'd for proof eterne. 1 
 
 Hamlet, 1604. 
 
 ' With officious industry the Cyclopes laboured hard 
 with a terrible din in forging thunderbolts and other
 
 CHRISTOPHER SLY 147 
 
 instruments of terror. 1 BACON : Wisdom of the Ancients, 
 1609. 
 
 ' HAMLET (pointing- to the dead body of Polonius). This 
 counsellor is now most still, most secret and most 
 grave, 
 Who was in life a foolish prating knave. 1 
 
 Hamlet, 1604. 
 
 * The best counsellors are the dead. 1 BACON : Essay of 
 Counsel, 1607. 
 
 ' She swoons to see them bleed. 1 Hamlet, 1604. 
 
 ' Many upon seeing of others bleed, themselves are 
 ready to faint. BACON : Sylva Sylvarum, 1625. 
 
 To thine ownself be true: Hamlet, 1603. 
 
 ' I prefer nothing but that they be true to themselves 
 and I true to myself. BACON : Promus, 1594-96. 
 
 Let us living in the twentieth century also be 
 true to ourselves, though it may involve a wrench 
 to part with the assumptions of a lifetime. 
 
 I give one more parallel : 
 
 * There's a divinity that shapes our ends, 
 Rough-hew them how we will.'' 
 
 Hamlet, 1604. 
 
 In the biliteral decipher from ' Novum Organum,' 
 1620, are the following beautiful sentences of the 
 concealed poet, Francis Bacon : 
 
 ' I have lost therein a present fame that I may out of 
 anie doubt recover it in our owne and othe 1 lands after 
 
 102
 
 148 
 
 manie a long yeare. I think some ray that farre off 
 golden morning will glimmer ev^n into the tombe where 
 I shall lie, and I shall know that wisdome led me thus to 
 wait unhonour'd as is meete until in the perfected time 
 which the Ruhr that doth wisely shape our ends, rough-hew 
 them how we will, doth ev'n now know my justification 
 bee complete. 1
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE EDUCATION OF CHRISTOPHER SLY 
 
 OWING to the paucity of available facts, Shakspere 
 had to be educated hypothetically to suit the 
 situation. 
 
 Born in 1564, in the scattered and squalid 
 village of Stratford-on-Avon, licensed to marry in 
 1582, and having children baptized as late as 1585, 
 we must assume the first twenty-one years of his 
 life to have been spent in and around Stratford. 
 
 Our first inquiry should be, ' Did he ever go 
 to school ?' In those days, and certainly in that 
 district, boys did not become schoolboys as a 
 matter of course. Thirteen of the village council 
 of nineteen were unable to sign their names. From 
 Ascham's ' Schoolmaster,' published 1571, we learn 
 that a father did not send a child to school unless 
 it had aptitude. Sending a child to school in 
 those days was as much a matter of consideration 
 as sending a boy to the Army or Church is in 
 these. 
 
 149
 
 150 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 A dull child, says Ascham, never lacketh beat- 
 ing. Perusal of this little book gives one a better 
 understanding of the 
 
 ' Whining schoolboy with his satchel, 
 Creeping like snail unwillingly to school. 1 
 
 Supporting the assumption that Shakspere 
 actually went to school are three facts : 
 
 1. He became an actor of small parts. Although 
 oral methods of teaching were used in those days, 
 it is not improbable he learnt to read sufficiently to 
 memorize his parts himself. 
 
 2. From five signatures (posterity's only in- 
 heritance) we may infer that he could write his 
 name indifferently. 
 
 3. The better opinion is that he also wrote the 
 words ' By me.' 
 
 If he went to school, we may safely assume it 
 was in Stratford. In 1578 his father could not 
 raise fourpence for rates, and presumably was 
 unable to pay for his son being boarded and 
 educated in a neighbouring town Coventry, for 
 instance. 
 
 In 1535 and onwards Stratford possessed a 
 school a grammar school say some. What were 
 these grammar schools, and how did this one 
 develop ?
 
 SLVS EDUCATION 151 
 
 Says the 1868 Schools Commission Report : 
 ' Choirs in training to sing the Latin offices appear 
 to have been the nucleus of many of the early 
 Grammar Schools ; and when the Chantries and 
 Monasteries were dissolved at the Reformation, the 
 Schoolmaster was restored with the Latin grammar 
 in his hand.' 
 
 According to Dugdale, the Guild of the Holy 
 Cross at Stratford had, in the year 1535, four 
 priests and a clerk, who was also schoolmaster, at 
 10 per annum. A later survey showed that their 
 possessions, in addition to tithes, comprised a five- 
 roomed priests' house, a garden and dovehouse, 
 and that one of the priests conducted services at a 
 central chapel, and was teacher of the grammar 
 school at the side of it. 
 
 All this was very necessary. The choristers 
 had to be trained to read and sing in Latin. 
 
 In 1540 the Guild was dissolved with the other 
 English monasteries. 
 
 In 1553 Stratford obtained a re-grant of the 
 forfeited tithes, conditional on the town (which 
 was incorporated for the purpose) maintaining a 
 vicar, curate, and schoolmaster, paying some alms- 
 people, and keeping the chapel, bridge, and school 
 in repair. 
 
 When Shakspere was nine years old, the small
 
 152 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 schoolroom was still preserved and had a school- 
 master. 
 
 What books were available to the scholars ? 
 The wills and inventories of the time and district 
 do not disclose the existence of any books as 
 private property. 
 
 The Stationers' Register for the period shows, 
 indeed, a singularly poor supply for the whole of 
 England. What books, then, may be expected to 
 have belonged to the school under the personal 
 charge of the master ? 
 
 Lilly's Latin Grammar must have been there, 
 and none other, so as to comply with the Queen's 
 Ordinances of 1559 and 1571. 
 
 Ocland's ' Latin Panegyric of Elizabeth,' written 
 in 1580, was also enjoined to be read as a classic 
 in every grammar school. For dictionary (Latin- 
 English) they had probably Cooper's ' Thesaurus ' 
 (1552). Other likely equipments would be the 
 ' Abceedarium ' of 1552, the Psalter, the English 
 Catechism, the ABC, some inkhorns, quills, 
 paper, tallow-candles, and the schoolmaster's rod. 
 
 This hardly seems enough educational material 
 wherewith to acquire at Stratford the classical 
 knowledge of Latin shown in the plays and verses 
 attributed to Shakspere, whilst of education in 
 English there was apparently none.
 
 SLVS EDUCATION 153 
 
 Mr. Churton Collins (Fortnightly, April, 1903) 
 has brilliantly demonstrated that the writer of the 
 plays ' could almost certainly read Latin with as 
 much facility as a cultivated Englishman of our 
 own time reads French ; that with some, at least, 
 of the principal Latin classics he was intimately 
 acquainted ; that through the Latin language he 
 had access to the Greek classics, and that of the 
 Greek classics in the Latin versions he had in 
 all probability a remarkably extensive knowledge.' 
 
 A Daily News reviewer plaintively warned Mr. 
 Collins that he was giving the Shaksperian case 
 away. Mr. Collins, however, seems to have felt 
 that he could still hypothetically educate his man 
 in Latin, at any rate. 
 
 Mr. Spencer Baynes had once essayed the task, 
 and succeeded in bringing settled convictions to 
 Mrs. Stopes ; but his notions do not satisfy Mr. 
 Collins, nor should they pass muster with anyone. 
 
 Mr. Baynes vouched the book of one Hoole, 
 published in 1659, of what happened about 1620 
 at Rotherham's first school, of which he was 
 head master. At this school one master taught 
 writing, another music, and a third grammar. 
 The statement as to what Latin authors were read 
 in a grammar school about fifty years after the 
 time when Shakspere could have gone to school is
 
 154 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 of no pertinent value. But when Hoole goes on 
 to refer to the ' traditional plan of forcing a child 
 to learn by heart a crude mass of abstractions and 
 technicalities it cannot comprehend, of compelling 
 it to repeat in dull mechanical routine definitions 
 and rules of which it understands neither the 
 meaning nor the application,' we may safely assume 
 that matters at least were no better in 1573 than 
 in 1630. 
 
 After a reference to the book of one Brinsley, 
 who can tell us very little, Mr. Spencer Baynes 
 next vouched the curriculum prescribed in 1583 
 by its founder, for the Grammar School of St. Bees 
 in Cumberland. Grindall, Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury, was born there, and devoted his last years to 
 founding and endowing this school. He was an 
 eminent scholar, and naturally very particular 
 about the curriculum of the project of his old age ; 
 but as the patent and transfers to the school 
 governors were not confirmed until 1605, it is 
 doubtful whether the school was in working order 
 until that date. 
 
 The Archbishop's ordinances are set out in 
 Carlisle's ' Endowed Grammar Schools.' Mr. 
 Baynes argued that the curriculum so carefully 
 prescribed for St. Bees is a fair guide as to the 
 curricula of other grammar schools of the period
 
 SLY^S EDUCATION 155 
 
 and many years earlier. An obvious comment 
 is, ' Why, then, was it specifically and in detail 
 prescribed T 
 
 That the founder was so particular as to the 
 course of reading at a school his own money was 
 to endow is an indication that existing systems 
 did not meet with his approval. Nor have we any 
 proof that the full course was ever followed, be- 
 cause in the ordinances the schoolmaster is allowed 
 his choice of the prescribed books, 'to take or 
 leave as he thinketh meet, save that the Accidence, 
 the Queen's Grammar and the Catechism shall not 
 be omitted.' 
 
 Clearly, this minimum curriculum was contem- 
 plated by the founder as possibly all that might be 
 practicable. 
 
 Mr. Churton Collins very properly rejects 
 Mr. Baynes as an unsafe guide upon the subject 
 of Stratford education in 1573. 
 
 I hope to show that Mr. Collins himself is equally 
 in the clouds. He takes as representative of an 
 average grammar school course in 1573 the cur- 
 riculum formulated by no less a person than 
 Cardinal Wolsey in 1528 for a projected school at 
 Ipswich. 
 
 ' Wolsey,' writes Mr. Chalmers, ' was a liberal 
 patron of literature, of consummate taste in works
 
 156 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 of art, elegant in his plans, and boundless in his 
 expenses to execute them.' 
 
 About 1519 he contemplated an elaborate and 
 expensive scheme of lectureships in Oxford, but 
 three only were realized namely, for Greek, Latin, 
 and for Rhetoric, at Corpus Christi Hall. 
 
 His schemes of buildings were grandly conceived, 
 and executed with care and deliberation. 
 
 To build Hampton Court Palace occupied 
 Wolsey from 1514 to 1528 a period of fourteen 
 years. 
 
 For Wolsey 's projected Cardinal College, Oxford, 
 the revenues of twenty-two suppressed religious 
 Orders, totalling to 2,000 per annum of money in 
 those days, were appropriated. 
 
 The foundation-laying was a big public cere- 
 monial on March 20, 1525. One year's capital 
 outlay on building was nearly 8,000. When 
 Wolsey died in 1530 only the kitchen, the hall, 
 and about three sides of the quadrangle of this 
 magnificent building were finished. 
 
 A college of 160 persons had been formed to 
 occupy it, but there were no scholars. These were 
 to be supplied from Wolsey's native town of Ipswich. 
 Let us follow the working of his scheme there. 
 
 At Ipswich his plan comprised a college con- 
 stituted of a dean, twelve canons, eight clerks, and
 
 SLY'S EDUCATION 157 
 
 eight choristers. This college was to have a 
 grammar school attached. 
 
 He obtained an old priory site of six acres in 
 March, 1527, and requested the French Court to 
 open a new quarry at Caen to supply him with 
 good stone. For endowment he obtained transfer 
 of part of the possessions of ten monasteries. 
 
 In 1528 he drew up in Latin the rules of his 
 college and school. They are to be found set out 
 in a book called ' Essay on a System of Classical 
 Instruction ' (London : John Taylor, 1825). 
 
 Wolsey evidently intended a large number of 
 classes working on a finely graduated system. 
 Interest was to be excited in the district by pub- 
 lication of the proposed rules. The Corporation 
 had to be won over to the scheme, as some of 
 their lands were required. It is, as it were, this 
 grandiloquent prospectus of a company which did 
 not go to allotment which has saved Mr. Collins to 
 the orthodox notion of the authorship of the plays. 
 
 From this hypothetical grammar school those 
 most soundly prepared scholars were intended to 
 be passed on to the college in Oxford, taught by 
 the best men of the day a college which, accord- 
 ing to Wolsey's promises, was to be the repository 
 of copies of all the manuscripts of the Vatican. 
 The curriculum was the best Wolsey could devise.
 
 158 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 Was it ever taught ? / think not. In Wodder- 
 spoon's ' Historic Sites of Suffolk ' there are some 
 useful facts. The foundation-stone of the college 
 and school was not laid until June 15, 1528, and 
 the Corporation granted their land in the same 
 year. 
 
 Mr. Wodderspoon sets out an interesting letter 
 to Wolsey from the newly appointed Dean, dated 
 September 27 (probably of 1529). It speaks of 
 the delivery of 171 tons of stone from Caen, and 
 that more was expected. The college part ap- 
 pears to have been just set going, but whether in 
 a temporary building or not is not shown.* He 
 speaks of a procession to church of himself, the sub- 
 dean, six priests, eight clerks, and nine choristers, 
 ' with all our servants.' He refers to the difficulty 
 of the sub-dean ' upon his charge of surveying of 
 the works and buildings of your Grace's College.' 
 
 He also refers to a Mr, Senthall, who * is always 
 present at Mattins, and all masses with Evensong/ 
 and who ' is very sober and discrete, and bringeth 
 up your choristers very well, assuring your G-race 
 there shall be no better children in no place of 
 England than we shall have here, and that in a 
 
 * The priory was taken over with the site ; so the 
 priory building may have been used for the college for 
 the time being.
 
 SLY'S EDUCATION 159 
 
 short time.' There is no evidence that anything 
 more than the gatehouse was ever built. Wolsey's 
 disgrace and death were in 1530. 
 
 According to Dugdale's ' Monasteries/ the site of 
 the college was granted to some one else in 1532, 
 two years after Wolsey's collapse. 
 
 Upon the evidence I venture to assert that 
 ; Wolsey's curriculum was never put into practice, 
 1 even at Ipswich. 
 
 But why go to an Archbishop's school in the 
 North- West, or to a Cardinal's school in the East, of 
 England for relevant inferences about the sort of 
 education available at Stratford-on-Avon ? 
 
 What evidence is to be gathered from neighbour- 
 ing towns in Warwickshire ? Mrs. Stopes tells 
 us that on Speed's old map of Warwickshire Strat- 
 ford is shown half as large as Coventry. 
 
 Let us refer to Coventry. There, in 1546, one 
 Hales maintained a school in the choir of the 
 church. In 1573 his executors conveyed to the 
 Corporation revenues to maintain a City Free 
 School, paying 20 per annum to a master, 10 
 to an usher, and 2 12s. to a music master. 
 
 According to ordinances, as late as 1628, charcoal 
 only is to be burnt in the school ; the scholars are 
 not to have free run of the library ; the dictionaries 
 are to be chained in the schools, and the masters
 
 160 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 are made responsible for all books from the Cor- 
 poration library. 
 
 St. Paul's School, London, was founded by 
 Dean Colet in 1510. Its curriculum, formulated 
 in June, 1518, shows nothing in common with 
 Wolsey's. ' First the Catechism in English, next 
 the Latin Accidence, then Erasmus and other 
 Christian authors.' 
 
 Search the particulars of other schools of the 
 period, and no evidence of uniformity of scholars' 
 courses can be found. 
 
 Shakspere's hypothetical education at Stratford, 
 according to a curriculum prescribed for, but 
 doubtless never practised, at Ipswich, will there- 
 fore not stand cross-examination. 
 
 But both Wolsey's and Grindall's courses are 
 useful indications of what a good tutor at the 
 University would be likely to teach, and the higher- 
 grade literature which a well-placed student, such 
 as the writer of the plays, according to Mr. Collins, 
 evidently had access to. 
 
 Private tuition for the sons of the aristocracy 
 was the main care in those davs. Ascham's 
 
 m 
 
 ' Schoolmaster ' clearly shows this. Francis Bacon, 
 we know, was sufficiently well tutored by the age 
 of twelve as to be sent to Trinity College, Cam- 
 bridge, under Whitgift, afterwards Archbishop of
 
 SLY'S EDUCATION 161 
 
 Canterbury. He was there from April, 1572, to 
 December, 1575. Thence, until September, 1576, 
 at the English Court Then two years and a half 
 at the 'Courts of France, and probably of Italy. 
 From March, 1579, he was in England, and in 
 1580, resident at Gray's Inn. 
 
 If the cipher story be true, he was the Immerito 
 of the Gabriel Harvey Immerito correspondence. 
 Harvey would be one of his College tutors, and a 
 brilliant young man of twenty-two ; Leycester 
 House, from which the Immerito letters are dated, 
 would be a house he would, after Sir Nicholas 
 Bacon's death, sometimes live at when not at the 
 Court. In view of the cipher story it is interesting 
 to read Ascham's statement about the Queen's 
 literary ability : ' Yes, 1 believe that, beside her 
 perfect readiness in Latin, Italian, French, and 
 Spanish, she readeth here now at Windsor (1571) 
 more Greek every day than some Prebendary of 
 the Church doth read Latin in a whole week/ 
 
 On Mr. Collins's assumption, the man who, before 
 the age of twenty-one, developed such wonderful 
 classical facility in a one-horse school, next pro- 
 ceeds to desert his wife and children at Stratford, 
 passing on the way the neighbouring University 
 city of Oxford, in order to become an actor of 
 small parts in London. 
 
 11
 
 162 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 I leave out the horse-holding tradition because 
 I want to keep to ascertained facts. Mr. Collins's 
 imagination has given to ' airy nothing, a local 
 habitation.' In one of the plays are these lines : 
 
 4 Some are born great, some achieve greatness, 
 Some have greatness thrust upon them.' 1 
 
 Shakspere was an actor, a masquer ; he filled 
 the position of mask for certain of the writings of 
 a great man. This was in the way of his trade, 
 and to that position he remained true to the last. 
 Neither by recorded word of mouth, nor the terms 
 of his will, or of any other published document, 
 nor by the facts of his life after leaving the stage, 
 did he attempt to further mislead. Despite ample 
 wealth, he left his daughter uneducated. He 
 behaved as a retired actor, which he was, rather 
 than a retired author, Avhich he was not. He was 
 no fraud ; he was a masque, and merely played his 
 part. His greatness has been thrust upon him. 
 
 The Droeshout portrait in the First Folio Shake- 
 speare is a mask with eyes. With its two left arms 
 it suggests a figure behind the front figure. Other 
 symbols are also shown to the careful observer.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 'FILUM LABYRINTHI' 
 
 WRITING to King James in October, 1620, about 
 the 'Novum Organum,' then being published, 
 Bacon stated that the work ' in what colours soever 
 it may be set forth is no more but a new logic 
 teaching to invent and judge by induction.' 
 
 At a later date, possibly 1625, writing to Father 
 Fulgentio, he stated, ' After these (works) shall 
 follow the " Organum Novum," to which a second 
 part is to be added which I have already comprised 
 and measured in the idea of it 1 This letter should 
 be read.* 
 
 Mr. Ellis, who joined with Mr. Spedding in 
 editing Bacon's works, remarks anent the 'Novum 
 Organum': 
 
 ' However this may be, it is certain that an 
 
 * Spedding has, ' I have already compassed and planned 
 it out in my mind.' The Latin is : ' Quam tamen animo 
 'tarn complexus et metlius sum.'' 
 
 163 112
 
 164 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 attempt to determine what his method, taken as a 
 whole, was, or would have been, must necessarily 
 involve a conjectural or hypothetical element.' 
 
 Again : 
 
 'It becomes impossible to justify or to under- 
 stand Bacon's assertion that his method was 
 absolutely new. ... It need not be remarked 
 that induction in itself was no novelty at all. 
 The nature of the art of induction is as clearly 
 stated by Aristotle as by any other writer. Bacon's 
 design was surely much larger than it would thus 
 appear to have been.' 
 
 The ' Novum Organum ' was, therefore, to be in 
 two parts ; and in what colours soever it might be 
 set forth it was (1) to teach men to invent, and 
 (2) judge by induction. Let us see whether Bacon 
 anywhere shows how men are to be taught to 
 invent (to originate). 
 
 In ' The Wisdom of the Ancients ' Bacon explains 
 his favourite fable of Orpheus as representing the 
 image of Philosophy, ' which busies herself about 
 human objects, and by persuasion and eloquence 
 insinuating the love of virtue, equity, and concord 
 in the minds of men, draws multitudes of people to 
 a society, makes them subject to laws, obedient to 
 government, and forgetful of their unbridled affec-
 
 'FILUM LABYRINTH!' 165 
 
 tions. whilst they give ear to precepts, and submit 
 themselves to discipline.' 
 
 Philosophy, therefore, according to Bacon, operates 
 by persuasion and insinuation. In the ' Advance- 
 ment of Learning ' (printed 1605), we are told: 
 
 1 Men generally taste well knowledges drenched in 
 flesh and blood, civil history, morality, policy, 
 about which men's affections, praises, fortunes do 
 turn, and are conversant. . . . Again, if the 
 affections in themselves were pliant and obedient 
 to reason it were true there should be no great use 
 of persuasion and insinuation to the will. . . . 
 Another precept is that the mind is brought to 
 anything better, and with more sweetness and 
 happiness, if that whereunto you pretend be not 
 first in the intention . . . impressions may be 
 strongly made when the mind is influenced by 
 passion.' 
 
 But it is in ' Filum Labyrinthi,' a tract addressed 
 in the MS. ad filios (in which he gave to his 
 assistants the thread by which the labyrinth might 
 be successfully entered and quitted), that we have 
 the nearest approach to a full revelation of his 
 methods. This tract was found among Bacon's 
 MSS. at his death. To quote from it: 
 
 ' For this object he (Bacon) is preparing a work 
 on nature which may destroy errors with the least
 
 166 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 harshness, and enter the senses of mankind without 
 violence ; which would be easier from his not bearing 
 himself as a leader, but bringing and scattering light 
 from nature herself so that there may be no future 
 need for a leader. . . . We ought to consider that 
 the importunity of teaching doth ever by right 
 belong to the impertinences of things. . . . But 
 now which (thou wilt say) is that legitimate 
 mode ? . . . Dismiss all art and circumstances, 
 exhibit the matter naked to us, that we may be 
 enabled to use our judgment. And would that 
 you were in a condition, dearest son, to admit of 
 this being done. Thinkest thou that when all the 
 accesses and motions of all minds are besieged and 
 obstructed by the obscurest idols, deeply rooted and 
 branded in, the smooth and polished areas present 
 themselves in the true and native rays of things ? 
 A new method must be entered upon by which we 
 glide into minds the most obstructed. ... In this 
 universal insanity we must use moderation. . . . 
 It has a certain inherent and innate power of con- 
 ciliating belief, and repelling the injuries of time 
 so that knowledge thus delivered like a plant full of 
 life's freshness may spread daily and grow to 
 maturity . . . that it will set apart for itself, and 
 as it were, adopt a legitimate reader. And whether 
 I shall have accomplished all this or not I appeal to 
 future time. 1 
 
 Further on is written : 
 
 * Wherefore, duly meditating and contemplating
 
 'FILUM LABYRINTH!' 167 
 
 the state both of nature and mind, we find the 
 avenues to men's understandings harder of access 
 than to things themselves, and the labour of com- 
 municating not much lighter than of excogitating ; 
 and therefore, which is almost a new feature in the 
 intellectual world, we obey the humour of the time, 
 and play the nurse both with our own thoughts and 
 those of others. For every hollow idol is dethroned 
 by skill, insinuation, and regular approaches. . . . 
 Wherefore we return to this assertion, that the 
 labour commenced by us (doubtless Bacon and his 
 literary and play-writing staff) in paving the way, 
 so far from being superfluous, is truly too little for 
 difficulties so considerable.' 
 
 Why was it only almost a new feature in the 
 intellectual world? The ' Filum Labyrinthi ' 
 answers this : 
 
 ' He thought also that knowledge is uttered to 
 men in a form as if everything were finished . . . 
 whereas antiquity used to deliver the knowledge 
 which the mind of man had gathered in observa- 
 tions, aphorisms, or short and dispersed sentences, 
 or small tractates of some parts that they had dili- 
 gently meditated and laboured, which did invite 
 men both to ponder that which was invented, and 
 to add and to supply further.' 
 
 Probably enough has now been quoted to indi- 
 cate that the ' almost new ' fatre, or method,
 
 168 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 which Bacon elaborated was not so much the in- 
 ductive system of reasoning (although that was a 
 prominent part) as the insinuation of knowledges, 
 a method once in use with the ancients in which 
 the real is masked by the seeming object. 
 
 Over what period of years Bacon practised his 
 <rreat plan of playing the nurse, both with his own 
 thoughts and those of others, is hardly the subject 
 of this article. But the sowing of the seed was 
 evidently a most extensive business, as Mr. Harold 
 Bay ley's recent researches should make apparent. 
 
 The plays and other light literature in which 
 the good things of knowledge were scattered with 
 a lavish hand were, possibly, the works of the 
 Alphabet (i.e., the A B C of his system of educa- 
 tion) to which Bacon alludes in his letters to Toby 
 Mathew. 
 
 I agree with Mr. Fearon that the passage in a 
 later letter to Mathew was a mere concealed way 
 of telling Mathew that he, Bacon, was ' putting the 
 Alphabet in a frame ' viz., preparing a selection 
 of the w r ell-stuffed and garnished plays for Folio 
 production as the second part of his ' Novum Or- 
 ganum.' 
 
 If this view is right, it follows that it was abso- 
 lutely part of the system that his authorship should 
 be concealed. Disclosure could not be made until
 
 'FILUM LABYRINTH! 1 169 
 
 many, many years after Bacon's death, so as to ^ive 
 the method long and patient trial. 
 
 ' To speak the truth of myself,' said Bacon, ' I 
 have often wittingly and willingly neglected the 
 glory of my own name and learning (if any such 
 thing be), both in the works I now publish and in 
 those I contrive for hereafter, whilst I study to'ad- 
 vance the good and profit of mankind" (Book VII., 
 chap, i., 'Advancement of Learning'). 
 
 Directly men were aware that the main purpose 
 of the published plays was not so much to enter- 
 tain them as to put them to school, the New 
 Method was certain to become a failure. Long 
 and patient trial of the system could alone attain 
 success. To disclose the author was to reveal the 
 schoolmaster, whose work would then be resented 
 and ignored as an impertinence by those for whom 
 it was most fit. 
 
 Few will deny the ' salting ' to be found in the 
 Folio Shakespeare. 
 
 The Hon. Judge Stotsenburg, in his recent clever 
 book, asks : 
 
 ' Was there in England a concealed poet who 
 wrote or revised the plays in part or all, or who 
 inserted in all or part of them the magnificent and 
 sparkling gems culled and gathered from art, from 
 nature, from history, from philosophy, from science,
 
 170 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 and from ancient lore, which have always captivated 
 and enchanted the reading world ?'* 
 
 The late Mr. G. C. Bompas wrote : 
 
 ' In all subjects treated of by Bacon, the human 
 body, sound and light, heat and cold, germination 
 and petrification, the history of winds, astronomy, 
 meteorology and witchcraft, the plays and prose 
 works closely correspond, and both exhibit a learn- 
 ing up to the time of the age.' | 
 
 It is hardly necessary to show how fully this 
 ' scattering of light ' has been accomplished. Books 
 have been written on the various ' knowledges ' 
 contained in the Folio alone. For observations as 
 to the law of the plays go to Lord Campbell, for 
 Biblical references to Wads worth, surgery and 
 medicine to Bucknill, geology to Fullom, natural 
 history and entomology to Patterson, emblems to 
 Green, sports to Madden, delineations of the pas- 
 sions to Donnelly, Bradley, and others ; folk-lore, 
 proverbs, natural phenomena, customs and many 
 other interesting things, to Dyer. We know the 
 use made in it of Holinshed's Histories, of Plutarch, 
 Pliny, Du Bartas, Montaigne, and classical authors 
 generally. After nearly three hundred years we 
 can report that Bacon's New Method has prospered 
 
 * ' An Impartial Study of the Shakespeare Title.' 
 f* ' Problem of the Shakespeare Plays. 1
 
 FILUM LABYRINTHI ' 171 
 
 and borne fruit. The brimstone has been so 
 cleverly mixed with the treacle that the compound 
 has been gulped down with universal satisfaction. 
 Moreover, Bacon always enjoyed a jest, and would 
 have laughed consumedly to know that some of 
 the most ardent and accomplished partakers of his 
 brimstone and treacle to wit, the faculty of ad 
 literam critics have swallowed the labels as well ! 
 
 Bacon has met the reward of the misunderstood. 
 Though ' in a despised weed ' he sought ' the good 
 of all men,' he to-day possesses only the suffrages 
 of a few. His New Method has been a world- 
 wide benefit, but not a personal success.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 t 
 
 1 THE ARTE OF ENGLISH POESIE ' 
 
 IN 1589 the above work was published by Richard 
 Field, with a dedication to Lord Burleigh, dated 
 May 28. 
 
 In 1722 was first printed a curious MS., by 
 one Edmund Bolton, probably written in 1620, 
 containing a passage stating that the fame was 
 that the ' Arte ' was the work of one of Queen 
 Elizabeth's gentlemen pensioners Puttenham. 
 
 The ascription to Puttenham therefore rests 
 merely on a rumour noted thirty-one, and published 
 one hundred and thirty-three, years after the date 
 of the work. 
 
 Dr. Garnett and Mr. E. Gosse, writing of 
 English literature of the period, say ' the " Arte " 
 is attributed, on by no means exclusive authority, 
 to one of two brothers Puttenham'; and add, 
 * We must acknowledge grave doubts whether it 
 can rightly be attributed to either.' 
 
 172
 
 'THE ARTE OF ENGLISH POESIE' 178 
 
 The ' Dictionary of National Biography ' shows 
 that these brothers were frequently in prison. The 
 known age of one of them does not fit with the 
 personal statements in the book, and the other 
 is not recorded to have been abroad. 
 
 Mr. Sidney Lee, alluding to the author, says : 
 ' He was the first English writer who attempted 
 philosophical criticism of literature.' Mr. Gilchrist, 
 an earlier critic, expressed the opinion that the 
 ' Arte ' was intrinsically one of the most valuable 
 books of the age of Elizabeth. 
 
 The work being so important and its authorship 
 still an open question, I may be excused for 
 suggesting another likely author. 
 
 The date of writing of the ' Arte ' is, according 
 to the opinion of Mr. Arber, about the year./ 1585. 
 
 In 1584 Vautroullier, the Edinburgh printer, 
 had published for King James of Scotland * A 
 Treatise of the Airt of Scottis Poesie.' On its 
 title-page was the printer's trade mark and motto, 
 Anchor a Spei. 
 
 My theory is that Queen Elizabeth, in a spirit of 
 royal emulation, thereupon thought well to show 
 what she and her literary assistants could do. 
 Francis at that date was greatly in the Queen's 
 confidence. In 1582 he had written for her a 
 monograph on the state of affairs on the Continent. 
 
 <*+&>' 4 /"*** 
 
 ,,
 
 174 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 In 1585 he was M.P., and made some marvellously 
 brilliant speeches. He also wrote to the Queen a 
 long and careful memorandum on State affairs and 
 the question of her personal safety. 
 
 It is very odd to find Francis, if a penniless 
 -younger son of Nicholas Bacon, taking, before he 
 is barely twenty-five, such a prominent part in 
 the affairs of his Sovereign, of whose purse he was 
 ,a pensioner. Both Francis and the Queen were 
 poets and expert linguists, and the ' Arte ' gave an 
 opportunity to the Queen to publish her verses 
 .and recollections, which .could .not well be given in 
 print in any other way. At the same time it 
 enabled Francis to expound the rules of poetry 
 which he had studied. Says the author in 
 Book IIL, chap. xxv. : ' We have in our humble 
 -conceit sufficiently performed our promise or 
 rather dutie to your Majestic in the description 
 of this arte.' Upon this point a few w r ords in 
 Bacon's ' Apology ' concerning Essex are instruc- 
 tive : ' Her Majesty, taking a liking to my pen . . . 
 .and likewise upon some other declarations which 
 in former times, by her appointment, I put in 
 writing, commanded me to pen that book.' 
 
 Mr. Arber points out that the ' Arte,' although 
 probably begun in 1585, was not altered and 
 .amended until 1589,, when it was printed by
 
 ' THE ARTE OF ENGLISH POESIE ' 175 
 
 Vautroullier's son-in-law, Richard Field, under, 
 curiously enough, the same trade mark, Anc/tora 
 Spei, which by this date had doubtless passed into 
 the latter's possession. 
 
 Bacon, writing years afterwards to King James, 
 refers to ' your Majesty's Royal promise (which to 
 me is Anchora Spei}.' 
 
 The composition of the * Arte ' having been 
 decided upon by these distinguished persons, the 
 next characteristic precaution would be to shrowd 
 the authorship under such a veil as could not with 
 any certainty be pierced. 
 
 The author remarks that ' the good Poet or 
 maker ought to dissemble his arte.' Compare this 
 with Bacon's ' Essays ': ' He who would be secret 
 must be a dissembler in some degree.' 
 
 We may therefore expect to meet with a number 
 of statements purposed to throw people off the 
 scent, combined with others which may be true in 
 substance and fact. 
 
 With this precaution well in mind, there is much 
 prima facie evidence pointing to Francis as the 
 author. 
 
 It is also quite likely that Francis wrote the 
 verses entitled the ' Partheniades/ which the author 
 states he presented to the Queen on a certain New 
 Year's Day. One of the verses alludes to ' twenty
 
 176 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 years agon ' of Her Majesty's reign. The usually 
 assigned date is New Year's Day, 1579, when 
 Francis was probably in England, but the phrase 
 would, perhaps, more correctly indicate the year 
 1578. Francis came from France about March 20, 
 1578-79, but, according to Kawley's 'Life,' he 
 visited England in 1578, before his final return. 
 It would be at this time that his miniature, bearing 
 date 1578, was painted by Hilliard, the Queen's 
 Court limner. Again, who amongst the Queen's 
 courtiers, skilled as a poet, better answers the 
 description of one who had spent his youth amid 
 foreign Courts (Francis was there from September, 
 1576), who was closely intimate with Lord 
 Burghley and Sir Nicholas Bacon, and who 
 (according to Hazlewood) quotes frequently 
 from Quintillian, the favourite author with Sir 
 Nicholas ? 
 
 Again, though treated as Francis was by the 
 Bacon family with much distinction, Sir Nicholas 
 carefully prepared his will a few weeks before his 
 death, but, although a very rich man, left nothing 
 to Francis, who, it will be seen by the latter 's 
 letter to Burleigh of October 18, 1580, was 
 eventually provided by the Queen herself with the 
 means to live. Francis no doubt became a gentle- 
 man pensioner of the Court. No acknowledged
 
 'THE ARTE OF ENGLISH POESIE 1 177 
 
 poet of the period answers to the description the 
 writer of the * Arte ' gives of himself. 
 
 It will no doubt be objected that Bacon could 
 have had no personal knowledge of Queen Mary 
 or Edward VI. , nor could he have been present at 
 the banquet in Brussels in honour of the Earl of 
 Arundel, nor at Spain in the reign of Charles IX. 
 Nor was he educated at Oxford. On the other 
 hand, had these experiences no doubt gathered 
 from others and with permission been entered as 
 the writer's own, his anonymity would have been 
 absolutely gone, since by the admissions the actual 
 author could have been readily traced and identified. 
 
 ' He who would be secret must be a dissembler 
 in some degree.' This dissembling may be less 
 than appears if it should turn out, as I suspect, 
 that some of the incidents occurred to, and were 
 interpolated by, Queen Elizabeth herself. 
 
 The following is suspicious of royalty : ' The 
 eclogue Elpine which we made, being but eighteen 
 years old, to King Edward, a Prince of great 
 hope.' 
 
 Elizabeth was eighteen in September, 1551, 
 while her brother Edward was King. The epitaph 
 on Sir John Throgmorton may be another inter- 
 polation by Her Majesty ; Sir John was judge of 
 the Palatine Court of her Duchy of Chester. He 
 
 12
 
 178 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 died in 1580. Her close intimacy with the Throg- 
 mortons is also shown by the letter of Paulet to 
 Burleigh in September, 1576, which states that he 
 is taking to Paris with him a son of Sir Nicholas 
 Throgmorton (brother of Sir John) at the recom- 
 mendation of Her Majesty, and therefore he could 
 not refuse him. Sir John was knighted by the 
 Queen at Kenil worth. His wife, according to the 
 lists of New Year's gifts, was at Court in 1578 
 and 1579. 
 
 Passing to the internal evidence of mannerisms 
 and style, I first draw attention to the dedication 
 of the book to Lord Burghley, nominally the work 
 of the printer. 
 
 Compare : 
 
 ' Bestowying upon your Lordship the first vewe 
 of this mine impression ' 
 
 with 
 
 ' The first heir of my invention/ 
 
 occurring in the dedication to ' Venus and Adonis,' 
 also published by Field in 1593. 
 
 Then contrast this concluding passage in the 
 'Arte': 
 
 ' I presume so much upon your Majestie's most 
 mild and gracious judgment, howsoever you conceiv*' 
 of myne abilitie to any better or greater service,
 
 'THE ARTE OF ENGLISH POESIE 1 179 
 
 that yet in this attempt ye will allow of my loyall 
 and good intent, always endeavouring to do your 
 Majesty the best and greatest services I can,' 
 
 with a passage in a letter written years later by 
 Bacon to King James : 
 
 4 1 hope and wish at least that this which I have 
 written may be of some use to your Majesty. . . . 
 At the least it is the effect of my care and poor 
 abilitie, which if in me be any, it is given me to 
 no other end but faithfully to serve your Majesty.' 
 
 I have italicized some words in the former 
 passage. We know that in 1592, when he wrote 
 to Burleigh, Bacon was openly begging for office 
 of some kind. ' I ever bare a mind (in some 
 middle place that I could discharge) to serve her 
 Majesty.' ' Place of any reasonable countenance 
 doth bring commandment of more wits than of 
 man's own, which is the thing I greatly affect.' 
 
 Internal evidence also shows that the work, 
 probably begun in 1585, was altered and added to 
 even up to 1589. The practice of altering and 
 adding was common to Bacon's acknowledged 
 works. ' I alter ever when I add, so that nothing 
 is finished until all be finished ' (Bacon to Tobie 
 Matthew). 
 
 Internal evidence shows the writer to have been 
 a barrister of such familiarity with law and plead- 
 
 122
 
 180 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 ing as we should expect Francis to have attained 
 at this period, 1585-89. In the last year he was 
 made a Reader of his Inn. Below are some illus- 
 trations from the ' Arte ' of this proficiency in law : 
 
 4 And this figure is much used by our English 
 pleaders in the Star Chamber and Chancery, which 
 they call to confess and avoid.' 
 
 ' It serveth many times to great purpose to pre- 
 vent our adversaries' arguments and take upon us 
 to know before what our judge, or adversary, or 
 hearer thinketh.' 
 
 ' It is also very many times used for a good 
 pollicie in pleading.' 
 
 ' As he that in a litigious case for land would 
 prove it, not the adversaries, but his clients/ 
 
 'No man can say its his by heirship, nor by 
 legacie or testator's device, nor that it came by 
 purchase or engage, nor from his Prince for any 
 good service.' 
 
 ' This man deserves to be endited of petty 
 larceny for pilfering other men's devices from them 
 and converting them to his own use.' 
 
 Compare Bacon's remarks to Elizabeth in Apo- 
 thegms concerning Heywood : 
 
 ' No, madam, for treason I cannot deliver opinion 
 that there is any, but for felony very many. Be- 
 cause he had stolen so many of his sentences and 
 conceits out of Cornelius Tacitus/
 
 'THE ARTE OF ENGLISH POESIE' 181 
 
 Bacon's love of the art of persuasion (which he 
 was fond of illustrating with the story of the un- 
 resisted invasion of Italy, where the conqueror 
 came with chalk in his hands to mark up lodging- 
 places for his soldiers rather than with arms to 
 force their way) seems also a characteristic of the 
 writer of the ' Arte.' 
 
 In 'The Wisdom of the Ancients/ 1609, he 
 writes : 
 
 ' The fable of Orpheus, though trite and common, 
 has never been well interpreted/ 
 
 Then he explains : 
 
 ' Orpheus' s music is of two sorts . . . the first 
 may fitly be applied to natural philosophy, the 
 second to moral or civil discipline ... by per- 
 suasion and eloquence ; insinuating the love of 
 virtue, equity, and concord in the minds of men, 
 draws multitudes of men to a Society, makes them 
 subject to laws, obedient to government/ 
 
 In the grounds of Gorhambury Bacon erected a 
 statue to Orpheus, inscribed ' Philosophy Per- 
 sonified.' 
 
 In his discourse on the ' Plantation of Ireland,' 
 1608, he stated ' that Orpheus, by the virtue of 
 the sweetness of his harp, did call and assemble 
 the beasts and birds of their nature, wild and
 
 182 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 savage, to stand about him as in a theatre,' which 
 he explained to imply the reducing and plantation 
 of kingdoms when people of barbarous manners 
 are brought to give ear to the wisdom of laws and 
 governments. 
 
 The passage in the ' Arte ' relating to Orpheus 
 is at the beginning of Book I., chap. iii. After 
 referring to sweet and eloquent persuasion, he 
 proceeds : 
 
 'And Orpheus assembled the wilde beastes to 
 come in heards to barken to his musicke and by 
 that means made them tame, implying thereby 
 how, by his discreet and wholesome lessons, uttered 
 in harmonic and with melodious instruments, he 
 brought the rude and savage people to a more civil 
 and orderly life.' 
 
 Internal evidence shows the writer of the ' Arte,' 
 like Bacon and the writer of the Shakespeare Plays, 
 to be fond of introducing new and unaccustomed 
 words. In Book III., chap, iv., before proceeding 
 to discuss a number of novel words used by him, 
 the writer of the ' Arte ' says : 
 
 * And peradventure the writer hereof be in that 
 behalfe no lesse faultie than any other, using many 
 strange and unaccustomed wordes and borrowed 
 from other languages.' 
 
 I will next give a few parallelisms between the
 
 <THE ARTE OF ENGLISH rOESIE' 183 
 
 ' Arte ' (A) and the writings of Bacon (B), and 
 Shakespeare (S) : 
 
 A. ' Every man's stile is for the most part according 
 to the matter and subject. 1 
 
 B. ' Style is as the subject matter."* 
 
 A. ' He cannot lightly do amiss if he have besides a 
 special regard to all the circumstances of the person, place, 
 time, cause, and purpose he hath in hand.' 
 
 B. * It is good to vary and suit speeches with the 
 present occasions and to have a moderation in all our 
 speeches especially in jesting of religion, state, great 
 persons, etc.' 
 
 S. ' He must observe their moods on whom he jests 
 The quality of persons and the time.' 
 
 A. ' And maketh now and then very vice go for a 
 formal virtue.' 
 
 S. ' There is no vice so simple but assumes 
 
 Some mark of virtue on his outward parts.' 
 
 A. ' But now because our Maker or Poet is to play 
 many parts and not one alone.' 
 
 S. ' And one man in his time plays many parts.' 
 
 Love in its two aspects are treated much alike 
 by the writer of the ' Arte ' and by Bacon : 
 
 A. * For love there is no frailtie in flesh and blood as 
 excusable as it, no comfort or discomfort greater than the 
 good and bad success thereof, nothing more natural to 
 man, nothing of more force to vanquish his will and to 
 inveigle his judgment/ 
 
 B. ' Love is a pure gain and advancement in nature,
 
 184 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 it is not a good by comparison but a true good ; it is not 
 an ease of pain but a true purchase of pleasures. 1 
 
 * It checks with business and troubleth men's fortunes 
 and maketh men that they can no ways be true to their 
 own ends. 1 
 
 The above proofs present what I think to be a 
 fair prima facie case for ascribing to Francis Bacon 
 the authorship of ' The Arte of English Poesie.' 
 
 Since this was written the late Mr. Walter 
 Begley, in a book entitled ' Bacon's Nova Resus- 
 citatio,' gives independent reasons for assigning to 
 Bacon the authorship of ' The Arte of English 
 Poesie.'
 
 EPILOGUE 
 
 WHATEVER my readers may think of the foregoing 
 papers, I can only say I have thoroughly enjoyed 
 their preparation and the researches necessary to 
 this attempt to ' pierce the veil ' of the Elizabethan 
 new birth of learning. 
 
 I do not hope to capture general acceptance. 
 Did not Bacon say : 
 
 * Thinkest thou that when all the accesses and 
 motions of all minds are besieged and obst?*ucted by the 
 obscurest idols, deeply rooted and branded in, the 
 smooth and polished areas present themselves in 
 the true and native ray of things ?' 
 
 No ; I shall be content to have taken a small 
 share in clearing the way for a few quiet people, 
 enabling them to appreciate the work of the great 
 educator o his race and nation, and to follow up 
 the investigation if inclined to do so. 
 
 The idols at present have their high-priests, and 
 have become fetish. That does not matter. Bacon 
 
 185
 
 186 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 accomplished his task. He laboured ' not for an 
 age, but for all time.' The Spenser and Shake- 
 spere monuments were part of his scheme, to lull 
 the people of his own age and for some time after- 
 wards, while his scheme of education was quietly 
 and unobtrusively doing its work. Yet his mar- 
 vellous intellect could reach forward and compass 
 the 'next ages,' when the facts which he had 
 planned to come to light would be revealed, and 
 the temporary illusions of the tombstones would 
 end. ' And time dissolves thy Stratford monu- 
 ment.' Prolific as were such writers as Dumas, 
 Maurice Jokai, and Lopez de Vega in their respec- 
 tive countries, Francis Bacon, the Englishman, 
 surpassed them. The fruits of his industry have 
 yet to be finally ascertained and assembled. But 
 this subject is anathema, and I must not pursue 
 it. There are limits even to adult comprehension. 
 
 * And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew, 
 That one small head could carry all he knew. 1 
 
 Ben Jon son, who worked with Bacon towards 
 the close of his life, placed on record, though did 
 not publish, a statement as to the remarkable extent 
 of Bacon's work. In his ' Discoveries ' is the 
 note now frequently quoted : 
 
 ' Lord Egerton, the Chancellor, a grave and great 
 orator, and best when he was provoked. But his
 
 EPILOGUE 187 
 
 learned and able (though unfortunate) successor is 
 he who hath filled up all numbers, and performed 
 that, in our tongue, which may be compared or pre- 
 ferred either to insolent Greece or haughty Rome.' 
 
 Towards the close of his life, Bacon the Peripa- 
 tician wrote what is described as a psalm or prayer, 
 from which I venture another extract : 
 
 1 Remember, Lord, how Thy servant hath 
 walked before Thee ; remember what I have first 
 sought, and what hath been principal in my inten- 
 tions. I have loved Thy assemblies : I have 
 mourned for the divisions of Thy Church. I have 
 delighted in the brightness of Thy sanctuary. This 
 vine which Thy right hand hath planted in this 
 nation, I have ever prayed unto Thee, that it 
 might have the first and the latter rain ; and that 
 it might stretch her branches to the seas and to 
 the floods. The state and bread of the poor and 
 oppressed have been precious in mine eyes : I 
 have hated all cruelty and hardness of heart : I 
 have, though in a despised weed, procured the good 
 of all men.' 
 
 Bacon had his faults, as he was ever ready to 
 admit. Yet his life conduct will stand examina- 
 tion. 
 
 How well he fought when pressed by the mob. 
 He was put to trial by his peers though a long 
 way from being his equals and bent before the
 
 188 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 storm as the best way to save himself for the com- 
 pletion of his life-work. 
 
 Hence, he has had to pay the penalty of the mis- 
 understood. Five years later he would have fear- 
 lessly faced the axe or the hangman's rope, as his 
 work would have been finished ; and death was the 
 occasion of no apprehension unto him, as his 'Essay 
 on Death' makes clear. 
 
 He was content to die with the sense of duty 
 honourably done, and trusted his ' name and memory 
 to foreign nations and the next ages after some time 
 be passed.' 
 
 I conclude, therefore, as I began. I am glad to 
 have assisted in tracing the handiwork of a great 
 teacher and philosopher, and publish what I have 
 observed and endeavoured to make plain from a 
 sense of duty and of gratitude to Francis Bacon for 
 what he did to better his posterity. 
 
 Ad manes Baconi. 
 
 1 This let my supplication be : 
 One fragment of thy radiant soul, 
 Of thy Promethean heat one coal, 
 O Master Mystic, give to me.'' 
 From ' letters from tlw DeadJ by OLIVER LECTOR. 
 
 y ol~ firit) fel up II? ^ b-BA C& 1/5
 
 APPENDIX 
 CIPHER HISTORY 
 
 UNDER the above title, Mr. R. S. Rait contributed 
 to the Fortnightly of February, 1902, his reasons 
 for suggesting the biliteral cipher story to be an 
 American concoction. My growing irreverence 
 for the orthodox literary and historical expert in 
 matters Elizabethan is the cause of the following 
 inquiry into the reasonableness of Mr. Rait's con- 
 clusions. 
 
 Mr. Rait thinks the story of Bacon's birth not 
 chronologically impossible, but denies this as to 
 the birth of Robert, Earl of Essex. 
 
 His grounds are that a Spanish gentleman is 
 stated to have had audience of the Queen five 
 days before the reputed birthday, and in a letter 
 recording the interview said nothing about her 
 condition. 
 
 The cipher story gives no date of Robert's birth, 
 and no record of his baptism can be found. It is 
 curious that, whereas the undisputed children of 
 
 189
 
 190 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 Lord and Lady Hereford (afterwards Essex) were 
 born at their only residence, Chartley, Robert is 
 alleged to have been born at Nether wood. Mr. Rait 
 would no doubt admit that for a privily born child 
 of the Queen the newly married daughter of the 
 cousin and lady of bedchamber to the Queen 
 would be a likely person to be passed off as its 
 mother. The subsequent crowding of presents and 
 honours on Lord Hereford, his despatch to Ireland, 
 his death there by poisoning at the hands, it is 
 alleged, of an emissary of the Earl of Leicester, 
 seem to me to be curious points of confirmation 
 of the prima facie truth of the cipher story, 
 and should have given Mr. Rait pause before 
 accusing Mrs. Gallup of concocting the cipher 
 story. 
 
 Mr. Rait rejects as impossible the cipher story 
 as to the Queen's admission before certain of the 
 Court ladies of the fact of Francis being her son, 
 and thinks the information must have leaked out. 
 But the fact of such an admission was incapable of 
 proof, and in those days folks who babbled lost 
 their lives. That a Sovereign should have a 
 bastard was not uncommon ; it gave rise to no 
 dynastic problem and called for no serious remark. 
 When a Norfolk gentleman ventured in 1570 to 
 say in public, ' My Lord of Leicester had two 
 children by the Queen,' he was condemned to lose 
 his ears.
 
 APPENDIX 191 
 
 * TRACHIMUS. Why doe you thinke in Court any use to 
 
 dissemble. 
 
 PAX i) ION. Doe you know in Court any that meane to live/ 
 
 Sapho and Phao, 1584. 
 
 Mr. Rait thinks the Seymour story belied by 
 the immaturity of the parties. A dietary of milk, 
 meat, and ale in those days may have matured 
 children rapidly. Early marriages in Court circles 
 were frequent. Prince Arthur, eldest son of 
 Henry VII., married at fifteen. Catherine Parr 
 first married at fourteen. Philip Sydney's wife 
 was sixteen when he married her. Their daughter 
 married at fifteen. ' A girl unmarried at twenty 
 was called an old maid ' (Besant's ' London in 
 Tudor Times,' p. 312). 
 
 Elizabeth was not much over fourteen when Sir 
 Thomas Seymour sought permission to marry her. 
 Being refused by the Government, he married (by 
 personal consent of King Edward VI., then aged 
 ten) Queen Catherine Parr, with whom Elizabeth 
 resided. 
 
 His grossly indelicate behaviour to the young 
 Princess is recorded in public depositions. That 
 he nevertheless obtained her affection is proved by 
 the letter from her of January 28. 1548-49. 
 
 She remained under the same roof with him 
 until September 5, 1548, when his wife died. 
 He again applied to Government for permission to 
 marry her. Evidently her consent had already
 
 192 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 been obtained. Shortly afterwards Elizabeth wrote 
 to the Lord Protector complaining of rumours to 
 the effect that she had given birth to a child by 
 Seymour, and requesting a proclamation to stop 
 the slanders. This was done. 
 
 Edward VI. was twelve at this date, and died at 
 sixteen. At eight he wrote in Latin. From the 
 age of ten he kept a journal. His biographer 
 states that his intellectual precocity and religious 
 ardour were unaccompanied by any show of 
 natural affection, and that though young he showed 
 traces of his father's harshness of disposition. 
 
 This part of the cipher story was of events as to 
 which Francis Bacon could only speak at second- 
 hand, and yet how closely the historical documents 
 corroborate the story. 
 
 Further on in his article Mr. Rait denounces the 
 cipher story as a concoction because Francis claimed 
 to be a 'Tidder,' instead of Dudley, the name of his 
 alleged father. 
 
 This may be a sound technical objection, to be 
 tested, perhaps, by the question whether our present 
 King would be justified in calling himself a Guelph. 
 
 But it is certainly curious that the word should 
 be written ' Tidder,' which I am told is the correct 
 phonetic sound of the Welsh word ' Tudor.' Surely 
 an American fictionist would have written ' Tudor.' 
 
 Mr. Rait contends that ' no man who had been 
 Lord Chancellor ' would ever have said ' our law
 
 APPENDIX 193 
 
 giveth to the first borne of the royall house the 
 title of Prince of Wales.' He thinks this the very 
 natural mistake of an American fictionist. 
 
 The recent ' Encylopsedia of the Laws of 
 England/ vol. xii., at p. 511, states the law to be 
 as follows : 
 
 1 The title of Prince of Wales has belonged to the 
 heir apparent of the Crown since the reign of 
 Edward I.' 
 
 The cipher phrase to satisfy Mr. Rait should 
 thereupon have run : 
 
 ' Our law giveth to the firstborn o the royall 
 house the right to be entitled Prince of Wales.' 
 
 Nor could Mr. Rait take exception to the 
 following phrase from a decipher dated 1622: ' My 
 attempts in after years to obtain my true, just, 
 and indisputable title of Prince of Wales.' 
 
 Bacon must have known the law. Previous to 
 his time nine Princes had borne the title, and the 
 eldest born of the Royal house had always received 
 it first. 
 
 That there were certain formalities of investiture, 
 proclamation, or letters patent must also have 
 been known to him, as he took part, in 1610, in 
 preparing the patent entitling Henry, eldest son of 
 James I., as Prince of Wales. He would also have 
 known what seems to me the crux of the position 
 namely, that so long as the firstborn of the Royal 
 
 13
 
 194 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 house was alive the title could not have been 
 legally conferred upon anyone else. But he was 
 like other people, not always exact. I draw atten- 
 tion to a more modern lapse. In her Journal the 
 late Queen Victoria records the parents' delight at 
 the birth of ' a little Prince of Wales.' 
 
 Mr. Rait shares the general outcry at the error 
 about Davison. The cipher story says, 'led him 
 to his death,' yet it is quite clear that Davison 
 lived for many years after the period alluded to. 
 
 The words occur in a cipher stated to have been 
 completed by Rawley in 1635. Bacon died in 
 1626. In this cipher Rawley expresses regret 
 for a number of errors, and the question arises 
 whether this was one of them. Davison died 
 when Rawley was a youth, so the latter would 
 know little or nothing about him. 
 
 Suppose Rawley made the easy slip of mis- 
 reading ' her ' as ' his ' in the written manuscript 
 from which the enfolding manuscript would be 
 marked for the printer, and instead of cipher 
 writing, ' led him to her death/ wrote ' led him to 
 his death,' the ground for the objection to the 
 passage would be gone. 
 
 The passage which is at p. 365 of the first 
 edition of the f Biliteral Cipher ' should be recon- 
 sidered. There are a few words further down 
 which I think help to confirm my view. ' To 
 send th' unfortunate woman to her death before 
 her time.'
 
 APPENDIX 195 
 
 If the mistake is in the decipher, the mis- 
 interpreting of three letters would account for the 
 discrepancy. Thus : 
 
 Aa&aabaaaa represents ' er,' 
 Aaaabaaa6 ,, 'is.' 
 
 Mr. Rait is wrong in saying there was an Earl 
 Strafford at the date of the cipher Wentworth, 
 the first Earl, was not created until 1640. There 
 was, therefore, no special reason for accuracy in 
 spelling the word ' Stafford/ which appears to 
 have been either carelessly or accidentally written 
 ' Strafford.' Confirming this view I find that in 
 the list of expenses of the Queen's table for 1576 
 (Nichol's 'Progresses,' vol. ii., p. 39), Lady Sta- 
 forde is referred to as Lady Strafforde. Proper 
 names at that period were spelt in a variety of 
 ways Burleigh and Raleigh for instances. 
 
 For another instance, Puckering, in the cipher 
 story, should probably be Pickering, meaning the 
 Queen's friend and admirer, Sir William Pickering. 
 Bacon did not know that person, but he did 
 know Lord Keeper Puckering. In the index to 
 Montague's * Life of Bacon,' 'Puckering,' becomes 
 ' Pickering,' and at p. 343 of vol. ii. of Nichol's 
 ' Progresses of Elizabeth,' the Lord Keeper is also 
 referred to as Sir John Pickering. 
 
 Mr. Rait is very severe with the cipher-story 
 statement that Lord Montague, who was certainly 
 
 132
 
 196 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 present at the examination, was also present at the 
 execution of Mary Queen of Scots. He, however, 
 admits that according to some versions a certain 
 Lord ' Montacute ' was present, but he says, 
 ' u Montagu " is a much more familiar name, 
 especially in America, but Bacon must have 
 known all about Montacute.' 
 
 I trust Mr. Rait will find time to read a short 
 contemporary account (which appears in Nichol's 
 ' Progresses of Elizabeth,' vol. iii.) of a visit by 
 Queen Elizabeth to Cowdray in 1591. In this 
 short account Lord Montague is also called 
 Montecute, and Lady Montecute is also called 
 Montague. In the list of Queen's presents in the 
 same volume the name is also spelt ' Mountague.' 
 
 Mr. Rait suggests that the cipher-story account 
 of the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, viz., 
 that ' Mary stoode up in a robe of bloud red,' is 
 cribbed from Froude's ' History of England.' 
 
 He says Froude's ' History ' does not agree with 
 a contemporary portrait, which proves that at her 
 execution Mary wore a black satin dress. At 
 p. 502 of vol. ii., Mchol's ' Progresses ' (quoting 
 from Gunter's ' History of Peterborough,' the 
 town to which Fotheringay Castle is near), it is 
 stated that Mary wore an uppermost gown of 
 black satin with purple under-sleeves, and that her 
 bodice was of crimson satin and her skirt of 
 crimson velvet. The contemporary portrait doubt-
 
 APPENDIX 197 
 
 less depicts the black satin overgown disrobed 
 before Mary bared her neck for the block. Thus 
 the cipher story is entirely corroborated. Mary's 
 body appears to have been left for weeks before 
 interment, so that the crimson bodice and skirt 
 were not available to the portrait painter. 
 
 Mr. Rait waxed very scornful when he discussed 
 the passage at p. 312 of the cipher story : ' Our 
 colonies in all the regions of the globe from remote 
 East to a remoter West.' 'It is,' said Mr. Rait, 
 ' as likely that Bacon wrote Pope's " Homer " and 
 Froude's "History" as that he penned these words 
 in the reign of King James I. For where were 
 the colonies ?' 
 
 By ' colonies ' at that day appear to have been 
 meant the small bodies of Englishmen established 
 abroad for trading purposes. Under the auspices 
 of the Merchant Adventurers of the East Indies, 
 chartered in 1600, 'colonies' appear to have been 
 established in the 'remote East' at the Canary 
 Isles, at Surat in Hindustan, at Achern, and at 
 Bantam. 
 
 As to the ' remoter West,' Mr. Rait will find in 
 Howe's ' Annales' (1615) references to colonies at 
 Newfoundland (p. 942), the patent being issued 
 to Bacon and others, at Guiana in South America 
 (p. 943), and at Virginia (p. 944). 
 
 That the above is the correct sense of the passage 
 is shown by a sentence in Bacon's pamphlet, ' Of a
 
 198 EUPHUES THE PERIPATICIAN 
 
 Holy War,' in which he refers to the attitude ' of 
 colonies or transmigrants towards their mother 
 country.' 
 
 Mr. Rait says that the word ' curricula ' could 
 only, in Bacon's time, have meant ' race courses,' 
 and therefore that ' students' curricula ' is a modern 
 expression adopted by the assumed American 
 fictionist. 
 
 Yet if he turns to the ' New English Dictionary' 
 he will find the word ' curriculum ' quoted as in 
 common use to express a student's course of 
 instruction as early as 1633, even in Scotland. 
 
 Finally, with regard to the Essex ring story, 
 which he adjudges to be a myth, he will find he is 
 not in accord with Mr. H. L. Stephen, an Indian 
 judge, at vol. iii., p. 81, of ' State Trials,' recently 
 edited by Mr. Stephen. That gentleman believes 
 in the story, and gives grounds for his opinion. 
 
 Mr. Rait's objection to the history recorded in 
 the cipher story, and his accusations against the 
 decipherer, do not appear to stand close examina- 
 tion. 
 
 BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD
 
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