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 THE GIFT OF 
 
 MAY TREAT MORRISON 
 
 IN MEMORY OF 
 
 ALEXANDER F MORRISON
 
 w;^
 
 DELIA BACON. 
 
 Front n Dngueyreotype taken in May. iS^S-
 
 Noteworthy Opinions, Pro and Con. 
 
 BACON vs. SHAKSPERE. 
 
 Compiled and Edited 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWIN REED, A. M. 
 
 Author ok Bacon vs. Shakspere, Brief for Pi:,a.intipp; 
 Francis Bacon, Our Shakk-speark, Etc. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 CoBURx Publishing Co., 
 
 27 Beach St. 
 
 1905. 
 
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 PREFACE. 
 
 The author.ship of Shakespeare has now been a subject 
 of discussion in literary circles throughout the civilized 
 world for more than fifty years. The problem is still 
 practically unsolved. Men distinguished in almost every 
 walk of life are on either side, though professional 
 ' Shakspearean scholars remain, as a rule, loyal to the 
 I traditional bard. 
 
 May we not hope that lovers of truth, for truth's sake 
 
 at least, will yet, in greater numbers even than heretofore, 
 
 participate in this fascinating research ? The eye of the 
 
 mind is like that of the body ; with a doubt in the one or 
 
 I a mote in the other, there is no peace. 
 
 Furthermore, the effect of such debates as this anions: 
 
 citizens of different nationalities, compared with the 
 
 * barbarisms of war and the equally bar])arous preparations 
 
 for war, now universal, cannot fail in some measure to 
 
 unify and fraternize mankind. 
 
 EDWIN KEED. 
 
 431866
 
 Trutli. is like a torch : the more it''s s hooky the more it shines.
 
 DELIA BACON. 
 
 Concord, Mass., 18 February, 1858. 
 
 Dr. Leonard Bacon : 
 
 I could heartily wish that I had very different news to 
 send y©u ©f a person who has high claims on me and on all 
 of us who love genius and elevation of character. These 
 qualities have so shone in Miss Bacon that, whilst their 
 present eclipse is the greater calamity, it seems as if the care 
 of her in these distressing circumstances [her last illness] 
 ought to be, not at private, but at the public charge of schol- 
 ars and friends of learning and truth. 
 
 R. W. Emerson.
 
 UN-V, Of' 
 
 CA U-1 r* O RN 1 A', 
 
 BACON vs. SHAKSPERE. 
 
 NOTEWORTHY OPINIONS ON THE SUBJECT OF 
 THE CONTROVERSY 
 
 G 
 
 A. W. Von Schlegel. 
 
 " y~^ ENERALLY speaking, I consider all that has been 
 said about him [Shakspere] personally to be a mere 
 fable, a blind extravagant error." ^ — (1808). 
 
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 
 
 " What ! are we to have miracles in sport ? Does God 
 choose idiots by whom to convey divine truths to man ?" ^ — 
 (1811). 
 
 Lord Byron. 
 
 "Shakespeare had many advantages ; he was an actor by 
 profession and knew all the tricks of the trade. Yet he had 
 little fame in his day ; see what Jonson and his contem- 
 poraries said of him. Besides, how few of what we call 
 Shakespeare's plays are exclusively so! And how at this 
 distance of time, and lost, as so many works of that period 
 are, can we separate what really is, from what is not, his 
 own ?"3_ (1821). 
 
 Benjamin Disraeli. 
 
 " ' And who is Shakspeare ' said Cadurcis. ' We know of 
 him as much as we do of Homer. Did he write half the plays 
 attributed to him ? Did he ever write a single whole play ? 
 I doubt it. He appears to me to have been an inspired 
 adapter for the theatres, which were not then as good as 
 
 ^ Sclilegel's ' Dramatic Art and Literature,' p. 302. 
 
 ^ 'Notes on Shakespeare,' i. 66. 
 
 ' Medwin's ' Conversations with Lord Byron.*
 
 .••>'•.. 
 
 2 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON, 
 
 barns. I take him to have been a botcher up of old plays. 
 His popularity is of modern date ; and it may not last ; it 
 would have surprised him marvellously.' "^ — (1837). 
 
 Hexry Hallam. 
 " The two greatest names in poetry are to us little more 
 than names. If we are not yet come to question his [Shakes- 
 peare's] unity, as we do that of * the blind old man of Scio's 
 rocky isle,' an improvement in critical acuteness doubtless 
 reserved for a distant posterity, we as little feel the power of 
 identifying the young man who came up from Stratford, was 
 afterwards an indifferent player in a London theatre, and 
 returned to his native place in middle life, with the author 
 of ' Macbeth ' and ' Lear,' as we can give a distinct historic 
 personality to Homer. All that insatiable curiosity and un- 
 wearied diligence have hitherto detected about Shakspere 
 serves rather to disappoint and perplex us, than to furnish 
 the slightest illustration of his character. It is not the regis- 
 ter of his baptism, or the draft of his will, or the orthog- 
 raphy of his name that we seek. No letter of his hand- 
 writing, no record of his conversation, no character of him 
 drawn with any fulness by a contemporary has been pro- 
 duced." ^ _ (1837). 
 
 In a subsequent edition of his work Mr. Hallam com- 
 mented on the above in a foot-note as follows : 
 
 " I am not much inclined to qualify this paragraph in con- 
 seijuence of the petty circumstances which have been lately 
 brought to light, and which rather confirm than otherwise 
 wkat I have said. But I laud the labours of Mr. Collier, Mr. 
 Hunter and other collectors of such crumbs ; though I am not 
 
 * ' Venetia.' Mr. Disraeli subsequently became Earl of Beacons- 
 fietd and Prime Minister of England. 
 
 ^ Hallam's ' Literature of Europe.' Mr. Hallam was probably the 
 ablest literary critic England ever produced. To the close of his 
 life he still asserted that he was in search of the author of the 
 Plays.
 
 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON. 3 
 
 sure that we should not venerate Shakspeare as much if they 
 bad left him undisturbed in his obscurity. To be told that 
 he played a trick to a brother player in a licentious amour, 
 or that he died of a drunken frolic, as a stupid vicar of Strat- 
 ford recounts (long after the time) in his diary, does not 
 exactly inform us of the man who wrote Lear. If there was 
 a Shakspeare of earth, as I suspect, there was also one of 
 heaven ; and it is of him that we desire to know something." 
 <1854.) 
 
 Ralph Waldo Emkrsok. 
 "I remember noticing that the Malones and Steevenses and 
 critical gentry were about evenly divided [on the authorship 
 of a song in 'Measure for Measure'], these for Shakespeare 
 and those for Beaumont and Fletcher. But the internal 
 evidence is all for one, none for the others. If he did not 
 write it, they did not, and we shall have some fourth unknown 
 singer."^ — (1838). 
 
 " Shakespeare is a voice merely : who and what he was 
 that sang, that sings, we know not." ^ — Idem. (1842). 
 
 " I cannot marry this fact to his verse. An obscure and 
 profane life." ^ — Idem. 
 
 August Friedrich Gfrorke. 
 "Karl Miiller-Mylius reports that as early as 1843 Pro- 
 fessor Gf orrer, then librarian at Stuttgart, privately expressed 
 the opinion that it was impossible that the historical Shak- 
 spere should have composed the Shakespeare dramas." — Lec- 
 tures on Shakespeare, p. 7. 
 
 Joseph C. Haet. 
 " He was not the mate of the literary characters of his day, 
 
 * Holmes's 'Life of Emerson,' p. 128. 
 
 'Conway's 'Emerson at Home and Abroad,' p. 101. 
 
 2 ' Representative Men.' Mr, Emerson was a sympathetic adviser 
 of Miss. Bacon in her efforts to discover an adequate authorship for 
 the Plays. It was through him that she secured the first publica- 
 tion of her views in Putnam's Monthly, January, 1856. He declared 
 that she had opened a discussion that would never be closed. Toward 
 the close of his life, however, he prouounced her composite theory, 
 viz., thatKaleigh, Bacon and others wrote the plays, "fantastic."
 
 4 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON. 
 
 and none knew it better than himself. It is a fraud upon the 
 world to thrust hia surreptitious fame upon us. The inquiry 
 will be, who were the able literary men who wrote the dramas 
 imputed to him ?"» — (1848). 
 
 Gkorg Gottfried Gervinus. 
 " Scarcely anything can be said of Shakespeare's position 
 generally with regard to mediaeval poetry which does not 
 also bear upon the position of the renovator, Bacon, with 
 regard to raediseval philosophy. Neither knew nor men- 
 tioned the other, although Bacon was almost called upon to 
 have done so in his remai-ka upon the theatre of his day. 
 .... Shakespeare despised the million, and Bacon feared 
 with Phocion the applause of the multitude. Both are alike 
 in the rare impartiality with which they avoided everything 
 one-sided. Both have an equal hatred of sects and parties > 
 Bacon, of sophists and dogmatic philosophers ; Shakespeare, 
 of Puritans and Zealots. Both, therefore, are equally free 
 from prejudices, and from astrological superstition in dreams 
 and omens. Just as Bacon banished religion from science, 
 so did Shakespeare from Art; and when the former com- 
 plained that the teachers of religion were against natural 
 philosophy, they were equally against the stage. From 
 Bacon's example it seems clear that Shakespeare left relig- 
 ious matters unnoticed on the same ground as himself, and 
 took the path of morality in worldly things; in both this has 
 been equally misconstrued, and Le Maistre has proved 
 Bacon's lack of Christianity, as Birch has done that of 
 Shakespeare. ... In both a similar combination of different 
 mental powers was at work, and as Shakespeare was often 
 involuntarily philosophical in his profoundness, Bacon was 
 not seldom surprised into the imagination of the poet. . . . 
 In Bacon's works we find a multitude of moral sayings and 
 maxims of experience from which the most striking mottoes 
 might be drawn for every Shakespearean play, aye, for every 
 one of his principle characters, testifying to a remarkable 
 
 ' Hart's Romance of Yacliting.
 
 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON. 5 
 
 harmony in their mutual comprehension of human nature. 
 In these maxims lie at once, as it were, the whole theory of 
 Shakespeare's dramatic forms and of his moral philosophy." ' 
 
 — (1850). 
 
 Chambkks's Edinburgh Journal. 
 
 " What was to hinder William Shakspere from reading, 
 appreciating, and purchasing these dramas, and thereafter 
 keeping a poet^ as Mrs. Packwood did ? This is at least as 
 plausible as most of what is contained in the many bulky 
 volumes written to connect the man William Shakspere with 
 the poet of * Hamlet.' 
 
 " We repeat, that there is nothing recorded in his every- 
 day life that connects the two, except the simple fact of his 
 selling poems and realizing the proceeds, and their being 
 afterwards published with his name attached ; and the state- 
 ments of Ben Jonson, which however are quite compatible 
 with his being in the secret." ^ — (1852). 
 
 Delia Bacon. 
 " My visit to Mr. Carlyle was very rich ; I wish you could 
 have heard him laugh. Once or twice I thought he would 
 have taken the roof off. And first, they were perfectly stunned 
 
 — he and the gentleman [James Spedding] he had invited to 
 meet me. They turned black in the face at my presumption. 
 * Do you mean to say ' so and so ? inquired Mr. Carlyle, with 
 strong emphasis ; and when I said that I did, they looked at 
 me with staring eyes, speechless for want of words in which 
 to convey their sense of my audacity. At length, Mr. Carlyle 
 came down upon me with such a volley; I did not mind it 
 in the least. I told him he did not know what was in the 
 
 ' We quote the above from a remarkable work, entitled ' A Study 
 of Shakespeare,' published in Germany in four volumes in 1850. 
 It was at that time not only the high-water mark of Shakespearean 
 criticism in the world, but also the actual forerunner of the new 
 era in it, that dawned upon mankind in Miss Bacon's publication 
 seven years later. Gervinus must be ranked with Lessiug in honors 
 conferred upon German scholarship. 
 
 2 The author of the article is said to have been Mr. Jameson.
 
 6 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON 
 
 plays, if he said that ; and no one can who believes that that 
 booby wrote them. It was then that he began to shriek. 
 You could have heard him a mile. I told him, too, that I 
 should not think of questioning his authority in such a case if 
 it were not with me a matter of knowledge. I did not advance 
 it as an opinion. They began to be moved with my coolness 
 at length, and before the meeting was over they agreed to 
 hold themselves in a state of readiness to receive what I had 
 to say on the subject."' — (1853). 
 
 David Masson. 
 
 " Shakespeare is as astonishing for the exuberance of his 
 genius in abstract notions, and for the depth of his analytic 
 and philosophic insight, as for the scope and minuteness of 
 his poetic imagination. It is as if into a mind poetical in 
 form there had been poured all the matter that existed in the 
 mind of his contemporary, Bacon. In Shakespeare's plays, 
 we have thought, history, exposition, philosophy, all within 
 the round of the poet. The only difference between him and 
 Bacon sometimes is, that Bacon writes an essay and calls it 
 his own, while Shakespeare writes a similar essay and puts it 
 in the mouth of a Ulysses or a Polonius." — (1853). 
 
 Nathaniel Hawthorne. 
 
 "What I claim for this [Delia Bacon's] work is that the 
 ability employed in its composition has been worthy of its 
 great subject, and well employed for our intellectual interests, 
 whatever judgment the public may pass upon the questions 
 discussed. And after listening to the author's interpretation 
 of the plays, and seeing how wide a scope she assigns to them, 
 how high a purpose and what richness of inner meaning, the 
 thoughtful reader will hardly return again — not wholly, at all 
 events — to the common view of them and of their author. It 
 is for the public to say whether my country-woman has proved 
 her theory. In the worst event, if she has failed, her failure 
 
 ^ In letter to her sister, published in Theodore Bacon's 'Biograph- 
 ical Sketch of Delia Bacon,' jj. 62.
 
 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON. 7 
 
 will be more honorable than most peoples' triumphs ; since it 
 must fling upon the old tombstone at Stratford-on-Avon the 
 noblest tributary wreath that has ever lain there."' — (1857). 
 
 William Henry Smith. 
 " Thus we see that Bacon and Shakspere both flourished at 
 the same time, and might, either of them, have written these 
 works, as far as dates are concerned, and that Bacon not only 
 had the requisite learning and experience, but also that his 
 wit and poetic faculty were exactly of that peculiar kind 
 which we find exhibited in these plays." ^ — (1857). 
 
 Sophia (Peabody) Hawthorne.^ 
 
 " I believe Lord Bacon and Shakespeare to be one and the 
 
 same person, or rather I believe that Lord Bacon wrote what 
 
 are called Shakespeare's plays and sonnets . . . He shared 
 
 with the divine Plato the highest human intellect." — (1857). 
 
 LoED Palmerston. 
 "Augustus Craven, having mentioned giving to Palmerston 
 a book or pamphlet trying to disprove that Shakspere wrote 
 
 ' Preface to Delia Bacon's 'The Philosophy of the Plays of Shake- 
 speare Unfolded.' Mr. Hawthorne's remarks ought to have fur- 
 nished the key-note to the discussion that has followed. 
 
 2 Smith's 'Bacon and Shakespeare.' In a letter to Nathaniel 
 Hawthorne, written June 2, 1867, Mr. Smith said: "For upwards 
 of twenty years I have held the opinion that Bacon was the author 
 of the Shakespeare Plays." In public announcement of this theory, 
 however, he was anticipated by Miss Delia Bacon. 
 
 ^ Mrs. Nathaniel Hawthorne, a lady of fine intellectual powers 
 and high culture. She read some of the chapters of Miss Delia 
 Bacon's book before they were printed, and expressed her opinion 
 of them in these words: 
 
 " My Dear Miss Bacon: — Mr. Hawthorne wishes me to tell you 
 that your manuscript arrived safely on Saturday evening. He has 
 not read it yet, for the very good reason that he could not, as I have 
 had possession of it ever since it came, and only finished it last 
 evening. My dear Miss Bacon, I feel so ignorant in the presence of 
 your extraordinary learning, that it seems absurd in me even to 
 say what I think of your manuscripts, and yet I cannot help it; for 
 I never read so profound and wonderful a criticism, and I think 
 there never was such a philosophic insight and appreciation since 
 Lord Bacon himself. No subject has so great a fascination for me, 
 as ' divine philosophy,' this searching into the nature of things, 
 and extracting their essence, and discovering the central order, the 
 Law that perpetually is striving to bring Harmony, and which
 
 8 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON. 
 
 the plays which go by his name, Houghton added : ' Pal- 
 merstou used to say he rejoiced to have lived to see three 
 things, — the reintegration of Italy, the unveiling of the 
 mystery of China and Japan, and the explosion of the Shakes- 
 pearian illusions.' " ^ (^. 1860.) 
 
 Nathaniel Holmes. 
 
 "It should be understood to what manner of man this 
 authorship belongs ; for it is not only 
 
 — ' a fault to heaven, 
 A fault against the dead, a fault to nature, 
 To reason most absurd ' — 
 
 but also a positive injury done to learning and philosophy, 
 and to every individual scholar and man, who shall be taught 
 to believe the enormous impossibility that such works could 
 be, and were, written by mere genius without learning, or 
 by some more fantastically superhuman inspiration. Does not 
 any man feel an unutterable indignation when he discovers 
 (after long years of thought and study perhaps) that he has 
 been all the while misled by false instruction, and that con- 
 sequently the primest sources of truth have been left lumber- 
 ing his shelves in neglect . . . [while he has] been put off 
 and befooled with paltry child's fables ? By the help of the 
 
 never can be broken — I mean, without a darkening of the universe. 
 I am not one of those who have 
 
 ' a credence in my heart, 
 An esperance so obstinately strong, 
 As doth outdo the attest of eyes and ears.' " 
 
 Tkoilus and Cuessida, (v. 2, 121). 
 We think that this judgment of the character of Miss Bacon's 
 writings was prophetic. Unfortunately, and to the disgrace of 
 modern scholarship, it is prophecy still. The time is coming when 
 Miss Bacon will be considered as the ablest and most courageous 
 woman, the true heroine, of the nineteenth century. 
 
 ^ From the Diary of Et. Hon. Sir Mountstuart E. Grant. 
 
 Lord Houghton (Richard Mouckton Milnes), referring to the above 
 when on a visit to this country a few years ago, assured Dr. Apple- 
 ton Morgan, president of the New York Shakespeare Society, that 
 he no longer considered Shakspere, the actor, as the author of the 
 plays of Shakespeare.
 
 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON 9 
 
 Eternal Power and such abilities as we possess, let the truth 
 and the proof of it come forth." ^ — (1866). 
 
 William II. Furness. 
 
 *' I am one of the many who have never been able to bring 
 the life of William Shakspere and the plays of Shakespeare 
 within a planetary space of each other. Are there any two 
 things in the world more incongruous ? Had the plays come 
 down to us anonymously, had the labor of discovering the 
 author been imposed upon after generations, I think we could 
 have found no one of that day but F. Bacon to whom to 
 assign the crown. In this case it would have been resting 
 now on his head by almost common consent. 
 
 " The popular reluctance to entertain Miss Delia Bacon's 
 opinion and yours appears to have no better cause than the 
 fear of losing a great miracle of genius. But the miracle is 
 far grander, besides being a rational miracle, when we make 
 Shakespeare and Bacon one."^ — (1866). 
 
 Thomas Prkwen, 
 
 "If you by accident have not seen a small two-shilling 
 volume by W. H. Smith, entitled ' Bacon and Shakespeare,' 
 you should get it. I confess myself an entire convert to his 
 opinion, that Bacon and not Shakspere wrote those wonder- 
 
 1 Preface to Holmes's Authorship of Shakespeare.' 
 
 The author of this work, the profoundest yet written on the sub- 
 ject, is still living (1899>, at the age of eighty-five, in retirement in 
 Cambridge, Mass. He has been Justice of the Supreme Judicial 
 Court of the State of Missouri, a law professor at Harvard Uni- 
 versity, and a deep thinker in some of the most abstruse problems 
 of modern thought. 
 
 2 Letter to Hon. Nathaniel Holmes, printed in Holmes's ' Author- 
 ship of Shakespeare,' p. 028. 
 
 Mr. Furness, one of the most able scholars of his day, was father 
 of H. H. Furness of Philadelphia, editor of the New Variorum 
 Shakespeare, now in process of publication. It is a remarkable 
 fact that the sou at the inception of his great enterprise had never 
 given any " prolonged thought " (as he has confessed) to the subject 
 of the authorship, notwithstanding his father's well-known convic- 
 tions in regard to it. We shall consider it a just penalty if the new 
 Variorum becomes, as it is likely to become, a magnificent monu- 
 ment to a dead sui)erstition. 
 
 \.
 
 lo OPINIONS, PRO AND CON. 
 
 ful plays. I was delighted to see that Lord Palmerston was 
 equally a convert to that opinion. I have held it for years." * 
 (1867). 
 
 Edwin P. Whipple. 
 " To this individuality we tack on a universal genius, 
 which is about as reasonable as it would be to take the con- 
 trolling power of gravity from the sun and attach it to one 
 of the asteroids." 2 — (1869). 
 
 John Henbt Cardinal Newman. 
 " What do we know of Shakespeare ? Is he much more 
 than a name, vox et prcBterea nihil ? Is not the traditional 
 object of an Englishman's idolatry, after all, a nebula of 
 genius, destined like Homer to be resolved into its separate 
 and independent luminaries, as soon as we have a criticism 
 powerful enough for the purpose ? I must not be supposed 
 for a moment to countenance such scepticism myself, though 
 it is a subject worthy the attention of a sceptical age." ^ — 
 (1870). 
 
 James Russell Lowell. 
 " Nobody believes any longer that immediate inspiration 
 is possible in modern times ; . . . and yet everybody seems 
 to take it for granted of this one man Shakspere."* — (1870). 
 
 Henry J. Ruggles. 
 " This presents one of the most extraordinary facts in the 
 history of the human mind. It makes necessary the con- 
 clusion that two men, living contemporaneously in the same 
 town, then a comparatively small city, — one a philosopher^ 
 
 * Letter to Mr. James Spedding. 
 
 2 Whipple's ' Age of Elizabeth,' p. 36. 
 
 ' From Newman's ' Grammar of Assent,' p. 276. 
 
 * Lowell's ' Among my Books,' p. 101. Mr. Lowell and Dr. O. W. 
 Holmes frequently discussed this problem together, the former 
 saying in explanation, "It is genius." "No," the Dr. would reply 
 "It is not genius; genius cannot give a man learning." Mr. Long- 
 fellow also had an intelligent interest in the question, and made 
 frequent inquiries concerning it.
 
 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON ii 
 
 endowed with the most brilliant imagination, the other a 
 most imaginative poet, possessing the profoundest philo- 
 sophical genius, and both reckoned among the greatest thinkers 
 the world ever saw — did, possibly in the same year, at the 
 same lime, and certainly at the same period of their lives, 
 write, without any interchange of views or opinions, upon 
 the same identical subjects, follow the same train of thought, 
 arrive at the same conclusions, and digest the results of their 
 study, reading and meditation into the same system or body 
 of philosophy, the which one stated to the world in abstract 
 scientific pi'opositions, while the other embodied it in poetic 
 forms and dramatic creations. No coincidence of mental 
 action so remarkable as this can be found, it is believed, in 
 any other age of the world.' ^ — (1870). 
 
 W. Hepworth Dixon. 
 " What you say about your conviction that Bacon wrote 
 the Shakespeare dramas is not surprising to me. That ques- 
 tion is a strange one, indeed ; but the argument in proof of 
 your theory is very strong."* — (1877). 
 
 Chables Dickens. 
 
 * The life of Shakespeare is a fine mystery, and I tremble 
 every day lest something should turn up.'"* — (1880). 
 
 William Thomson, Melbourne. 
 ♦Identification will come in due time. Meanwhile the 
 admissions show how able men perceive in the works of 
 Bacon indications of a mind gifted with the highest poetic 
 power."*— (1880). 
 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes. 
 «* Our Shakespearean scholars hereabouts [Boston, Mass.] 
 
 ' From 'The Method of Shakespeare as an Artist,' p. 289. 
 
 2 In letter to Dr. Robert M. Theobald of Blackheath, London. 
 Mr. Dixon, a well known litterateur, was the author of two works on 
 Francis Bacon. He was engaged on another at the time of his death. 
 
 3 From Halliwell-Phillipps ' New Lamps or Old?' 
 
 * From ' On Renascence Drama,' p. 30.
 
 12 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON. 
 
 are very impatient whenever the question of the authorship of 
 the Plays and Poems is even alluded to. It must be spoken 
 of, whether they like it or not. We'll 
 
 — ' have a starling shall be taught to speak 
 Nothing but' — 
 
 Verulam^ whenever Shakespeare is mentioned, if need be. The 
 wonderful parallelisms must and will be wrought out and 
 followed out to such fair conclusions as they shall be found 
 to force honest minds to adopt." ^ — (1883). 
 
 KuNO Fischer.^ 
 " Bacon desired nothing less than a natural history of the 
 passions, the very thing that Shakespeare produced." — 
 
 (1884.) 
 
 William D. O'Connor. 
 " Mr. Richard Grant White says that ' the great inherent 
 absurdity of the Baconian belief lies in the uulikeness of 
 Bacon's mind and style to those of the writer of the plays.' 
 Of all fudge ever written this is the sheerest. What likeness 
 of mind and style could he detect between Sir William Black- 
 stone's charming verses, 'A Lawyer's Farewell to his Muse,' 
 and the same Sir William Blackstone's 'Commentaries'? 
 What likeness of mind and style could he establish between 
 the famous treatise by Grotius on the ' Rights of Peace and 
 War,' and the stately tragedy by Grotius entitled * Adam in 
 Exile'? Where is the identity of mind and style between 
 Sir Walter Raleigh's dry-as-dust 'Cabinet Council' and Sir 
 
 ' Letter to Mrs. Henry Pott, London, England. Some doubts 
 having been cast upon Dr. Holmes' letter, we take this opportunity 
 to say that the above is a faithful transcript of a portion of it, made 
 for us in photographic fac-simile in the British Museum. 
 
 It has also been asserted that the poet changed his mind on the 
 authorship question when he visited Stratford during the"Hundred 
 Days." This is an error. He simply expressed the opinion, a per- 
 fectly reasonable one, that almost any person, born and bred in 
 that town and subjected to all its influences, would favor the local 
 traditions. 
 
 2 Professor of Philosophy in University of Heidelberg, and one of 
 the foremost literary critics of Germany. Not a Baconian.
 
 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON 13 
 
 Walter Raleigh's magnificent and ringing poem, 'The Sours 
 Errand'? What likenes8 of mind and style could he find 
 between Coleridge's 'Aids to Reflection' and the unearthly 
 bronze melodies aud magian imagery of Coleridge's * Kubla 
 Khan ' ? What likeness of mind and style exists between the 
 exquisite riant grace, lightness, and Watteau-color of Milton's 
 ' Allegro ', the gracious and an-dante movement and sweet 
 cloistral imagery of Milton's 'Penseroso' and the 'Tetra- 
 chordon ' or the * Areopagitica ' of the same John Milton ? 
 Are the solemn rolling harmonies of 'Paradise Lost' 
 one in mind and style with the trip-hammer crash of the 
 reply to Salmasius by Cromwell's Latin Secretary ? Of all 
 
 propositions I have ever heard, this of Mr. White's passes 
 
 that a man must show the same "mind and style" in writing 
 science and philosophy that he does in writing poetry ! " * 
 (1886). 
 
 Professor Francis W. Newman. 
 "Do the combatants intend to go to the bottom of the 
 purely historical question ? No more, I think, than did the 
 ancient Greek critics into the Homeric question. They were 
 as proud of Homer as we of Shakespeare, and insisted on 
 believing that the blind ' Homer ' of the Hymn to Apollo 
 wrote the other hymns, and the ' Iliad,' and the ' Capture of 
 Troy,' and the ' Margites.' Modern criticism has made a 
 creat overturn of the Greek notion. . . . Are the devotees 
 of Shakspere determined to make him a miracle? " * — (1887). 
 
 * From ' Hamlet's Note Book,' p. 56. Mr. Hawthorne was accus- 
 tomed to say that O'Coanor wa.s the only man he ever met who had 
 read Miss Bacon's book through to the end. 
 
 As to diversity of styles, we quote from Dr. Abbot's Life of 
 Francis Bacon, p. 447: " Few men have shown equal versatility in 
 adapting their language to the slightest shade of circumstance :ind 
 purpose. His style depended upon whether he was addressing a 
 king, or a great nobleman, or a philosopher, or a friend; whether 
 he was composing a State paper, pleading in a State trial, magni- 
 fying the Prerogative, extolling Truth, discussing studies, exhort- 
 ing a judge, sending a New Year's present, or sounding a trumpet 
 to prepare the way for the Kingdom of Man over Nature." 
 
 -The Echo, Loudon.
 
 14 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON. 
 
 Count Vitztiium D'Eckstadt.^ 
 " I am convinced that Bacon left the MSS. either with 
 Percy or Sir Toby Matthew, with authority to publish after 
 his death. But the civil war broke out, and the trustees 
 may have thought that under the rule of Cromwell and the 
 Puritans the memory of Bacon, as a philosopher, would have 
 been ruined, if it were published that he was the author of 
 these dramas. In the interest of their deceased friend, they 
 may have destroyed the MSS., together with the key." — 
 (1888). 
 
 Louis dk Raynal. 
 *' It has often been said of Shakespeare that he was even 
 more of a philosopher than a poet. Bacon's ambition was 
 to grasp the universe, making all knowledge his province. 
 Lessing has profoundly remarked of Shakespeare that his 
 drama is the mirror of nature. And M. de R^musat has said 
 that ' in Bacon's ordinary way of reflecting and representing 
 the characters and affairs of men we cannot but notice 
 something which brings Shakespeare to mind.' The analogy 
 between the two is certainly very strong." ^ — (1888). 
 
 Walt Whitman. 
 
 " Firmly convinced that Shakspere of Stratford could not 
 have been the author." 3_( 1888). 
 
 Sir Lewis Morbis. 
 
 " That Shakespeare possessed an altogether extraordinary 
 knowledge of law, of medicine, of science, of philosophy, of 
 language, of everything, in short, which would be impos- 
 sible for an uneducated man, whatever his genius as a poet 
 might be, has long seemed to me an insoluble mystery." — 
 (1888). 
 
 ^ Privy Councillor to tlie Emperor of Austria. 
 
 ^ In a letter to the ' Correspondant ' (Paris). This distinjjuishcd 
 jurist says: " When the editor of the 'Correspondant' received my 
 article, he told me that, after studying the question, his convictions 
 went even beyond mine." 
 
 ' Kennedy's ' Life of Walt Whitman,' p. 30.
 
 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON. 15 
 
 Geeald Massey. 
 "The philosophical writings of Bacon are suffused and 
 saturated with Shakespeare's thought. . . . These likenesses in 
 thought and expression are mainly limited to those two con- 
 temporaries. It may also be admitted that one must have 
 copied from the other. This fact is reasonably certain, and 
 deserves to be treated with courtesy." * — (1888). 
 
 John Bright. 
 
 " Any man who believes that William Shakspere of Strat- 
 ford wrote ' Hamlet ' or ' Lear' is a fool." 2_ (1889). 
 
 W. E. Gladstone. 
 "Considering what Bacon was, I have always regarded 
 your discussion as one perfectly serious and to be respected." '^ 
 — (1889). 
 
 W. T. Harris. 
 
 "I see by your aid, better than before, the strength of 
 Bacon's claim." *— (1890). 
 
 Professor David Swing. 
 
 " If Shakspere wrote the plays and poems attributed to 
 him, nothing is so useless as a good education."^ — (1890). 
 
 Professor Alexander Wixchell. 
 "I am a believer in the Baconian theory."* — (1890). 
 
 Professor Samuel Edmund Bengough. 
 " Experience disposes me to think that most of the finer 
 Shakespearean Plays may be illustrated from the works of 
 
 ' And yet in the same breath Mr. Massey pronounced the Bacon- 
 ian Theory " a revolt against common sense." 
 
 *Toan interviewer during his last illness. The 'Rochdale Ob- 
 server' (his home newspaper) reported him as " scornfully angry 
 with deluded people who believe that Shakspere wrote ' Othello.' " 
 Issue of March 27, 1889. 
 
 3 In letter to Dr. R. M. Theobald, Blackheath, England. 
 
 * In letter to us. Prof. Harris is U. S. Commissioner of Education. 
 
 * In letter to us.
 
 1 6 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON. 
 
 Bacon in the same way. If this be so, it certainly suggests 
 the exceeding probability that the universal genius, enthroned 
 by Ben Jonson on the summit of Parnassus, and the author 
 of the Plays were one and the same person." — (1890). 
 
 Rev. H. R. Haweis. 
 "We are all Baconians here." ' — ( 1890). 
 
 John G. Whittier. 
 
 « I have read thy able Brief with interest. Whether Bacon 
 wrote the wonderful plays or not, I am quite sure the man 
 Shakspere neither did nor could." — (1891). 
 
 Gen. Benjamin F. Butler. 
 " I am a firm believer in the Baconian theory." ' — (1891). 
 
 Francis Paekman. 
 
 " Some of the points you raise are very hard to answer." * 
 — (1891). 
 
 Mrs. Harriet Peescott Spoppord. 
 
 " One who loves all of Shakespeare and who was brought 
 up on Charles Knight's conjectural biography, and also loves 
 Bacon and burns with his wrongs, is cruelly torn between 
 two opinions. But it makes Bacon a supernal being."' — 
 (1891). 
 
 Sir Joseph N. McKenna, M. P. 
 
 '< On the general question of the authorship of the Shake- 
 speare Plays, I may say that I have no more doubt that Lord 
 Bacon was the author of all of them, and of the poetry attri- 
 buted to Shakspere, than I have of the fact that Pope wrote 
 the Essay on Man."*— (1891). 
 
 ' In letter to us. One year later (1891), Mr. Haweis said that he had 
 never met anyone who, having thoroughly investigated the matter, 
 came to a different conclusion. 
 
 *In letter to us.
 
 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON. 17 
 
 Robert M. Theobald. 
 
 "I believe that if the question could be made a material 
 one in some action at law, where either chaiacter or money- 
 was at stake, it would be perfectly easy for any barrister of 
 ordinary skill to carry the plaintiff's case triumphantly with 
 an intelligent jury." i— (1891). 
 
 Gail Hamilton. 
 
 " You have put it briefly, succinctly ; it seems to me, incon- 
 •trovertibly."2_(l891). 
 
 John L. T. Sneed. 
 
 *' When one comes to study the literature of the subject in 
 an honest quest of truth, it will occur to him, as a strange 
 feature of the controversy, that the literary world has con- 
 fided for three hundred years in tradition alone, and thus 
 accepted the belief that the jolly lessee of the Globe and 
 Blackfriars wrote the celebrated plays, collected after his 
 death in the folio of 1623 ; and yet, upon thorough investi- 
 gation, it is manifest that he never wrote a line of them."^ — 
 (1891). 
 
 Ltsander Hill. 
 
 «' The weight of evidence is, I think, in favor of Bacon." * 
 — (1891). 
 
 Henry Labouchere. 
 
 " The case for Bacon, thus put, is a strong one. There is 
 nothing particularly improbable in Shakespeare, as the man- 
 
 ^ In letter to us. 
 
 ^Miss Abigail Dodge in letter to us. She said further that one 
 day, as she was reading the historical Plays, the conviction sud- 
 denly flashed upon her mind that Shakspere, considering his posi- 
 tion in life, could never have written them. He did not have, and 
 under the circumstances could not have had, the kind of knowl- 
 edge necessary for the purpose. "You have now converted me, 
 and I shall never be re-converted." 
 
 * Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of the State of Teunegsee, 
 in letter to us. 
 
 * It was this utterance of a college classmate, au eminent lawyer 
 of Chicago and a gentleman of strongly conservative tendencies, 
 that first called our serious attention to this controversy.
 
 1 8 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON. 
 
 ager of a theatre, having given his name to plays that he 
 produced, and the author of which had grounds not to wish 
 to be known as their writer. In any case, it is not more 
 improbable than that the uneducated son of a man who could 
 not write, and whose daughter could not write, came up to 
 London from a small country town, very shortly afterwards 
 wrote a play like Hatnlet, and followed it up with plays which 
 involved a knowledge of ancient and modern literature, of 
 several foreign languages, and of the niceties of forensic pro- 
 cedure ; and then went back to his country town to consort 
 with the clowns who had been the friends of his youth." * — ■ 
 (1891). 
 
 Prince Bismarck. 
 
 ♦' On this, as on a previous occasion, Bismarck referred to the 
 controversy concerning the authorship of Shakespeare's plays. 
 He gave expression to a half-hearted belief that there might 
 well be something in the supposition that Lord Bacon and 
 not Shakespeare had written them. ' Well, well,' he said, 
 with one of his significant looks implying doubt or at least 
 an open mind on the subject, ' after all there may be some- 
 thing in it.' He did not pretend to any special knowledge, 
 but he said that he could not understand how it were possible 
 that a man, however gifted with the intuition of genius, could 
 have written M'hat was attributed to Shakespeare unless he 
 had been in touch with the great affairs of state, behind the 
 scenes of political life, and also intimate with all the social 
 courtesies and refinements of thought which, in Shakespeare's 
 time, were only to be met with in the highest circles. 
 
 It also seemed to Prince Bismarck incredible that the man 
 who had written the greatest dramas in the world's literature, 
 could of his own free will, whilst still in the prime of life, 
 have retired to such a place as Stratford-on-Avon and lived 
 there for years, cut off from intellectual society and out of 
 touch with the world." 2— (1892). 
 
 1 The Truth, London. 
 
 ^ From Sidney Whitman's ' Personal Reminiscences of Princo 
 Bismarck,' pp. 136-6.
 
 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON 19 
 
 Thomas W. White. 
 
 " I have been driven to the conclusion that Shakspere 
 had nothing to do with the composition of the Plays." ' — 
 (1892). 
 
 Frances E. Willard. 
 
 " It seems perfectly reasonable to me that Lord Bacon and 
 a number of other brilliant thinkers of the Elizabeth era, 
 who were nobles, and who, owing to the position of the stage, 
 would not care to have their names associated with the drama, 
 composed or moulded the plays."- — (1893). 
 
 O. B. Fkothingham. 
 
 " In his general position as showing the impossibility of 
 the Shaksperean authorship Mr. Reed is unanswerable."^ — 
 (1893). 
 
 " There is a bitter tragedy in the mistaken enthusiasm that 
 for more than two centuries has been scattering flowers on 
 the wrong grave and laying garlands on the wrong head." — 
 Idem. 
 
 Professor A. E. Dolbear. 
 " It appears from the evidence presented highly improbable 
 that Shakspere either wrote or could have written what has 
 been attributed to him."-— (1893). 
 
 Mary A. Livermore. 
 "The arguments for Bacon [in the 'Arena Magazine'] 
 demonstrate the impossibility of the Shaksperean author- 
 ship. Some other person than William Shakspere wrote the 
 Shakespeare Plays." -'— (1893). 
 
 William Theobald. 
 " Shakspere, whose name suggested the pseudonym under 
 which the plays appeared, could have had no possible objec- 
 tion as an actor to be thought the writer of the plays pro- 
 
 ' ' Our English Homer,' viii. 
 
 *The 'Arena Magazine,' Boston, Mass.
 
 20 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON. 
 
 duced under his management. The attribution added to his 
 importance, and may have swelled his profits. But with Bacon 
 the case was far different. His mother was a rigid Puritan, 
 who detested plays and actors, and to whom it wonld have 
 been a terrible atHiction had she known that her son, of whose 
 abilities she was so proud, was wasting his time and energies 
 on such compositions. Would such a mother as his have felt 
 easy in her mind as to the sources whence her son had derived 
 his models for such characters as Doll Tearsheet and Mistress 
 Quickly?'"— (1894). 
 
 Edwin Borman. 
 
 " Bacon's Instauratio Magna is composed of two parts. He 
 wrote one part in form of scientific prose and under his own 
 name ; he wrote the other, the parabolical part, which was 
 intended for the future of humanity in the form of dramas 
 under the pseudonym of William Shakespeare." (1894). 
 
 Theron S. E. Dixon. 
 
 " We cannot conclude without a brief word of tribute to 
 Delia Bacon. Alone, and first in all the world, she discerned 
 Bacon^s authorship of the plays. Realizing profoundly the 
 value of her discovery, this noble woman freely devoted her 
 life to its development. Crossing the Atlantic to prosecute 
 her researches in London, she was compelled by her poverty 
 to live there in a garret, and almost literally upon bread and 
 water. Through the effect of her privations while thus 
 absorbed in her work, her mind at length became clouded, 
 and her life went out in darkness, — a sacrifice to her devo- 
 tion. But through her untiring efforts, her discovery had 
 been published ; and since then all who have dealt with the 
 
 1 From an address delivered at Budleigh Salterton in 1894. It is 
 pertinent to add that Sir Thomas Bodley, who founded the library 
 that bears his name at Oxford and who would not admit dramas 
 (which he called " riffe raffes ") into it, tells us that Bacon " wasted 
 many years of his life on such study as was not worthy of him." 
 What studies ? Who can suggest one that fits, if it be not dramatic ? 
 And if dramatic, what so likely as the Shake-speare Plays, thirty 
 ^bree editions of which, taken singly, were anonymous?
 
 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON. 21 
 
 theme have but labored in the exploration and development 
 of the rich mine she first discovered and disclosed to the 
 world ; — and to her be the wreath of immortality." — (1895). 
 
 Bernard Ten Brink. 
 «' The world's continued belief in Shakspere is a morbid 
 phenomenon of the time." ' — (1895). 
 
 Alexander B. Grosart. 
 
 " I can't help anticipating that, some of these days, Bacon 
 letters or other papers will turn up, interpretive of his, at 
 present, dark phrase to Sir John Davies, of * your concealed 
 poet.' We have noble contemporary poetry, unhappily anony- 
 mous, and I shall not be surprised to find Bacon the concealed 
 singer of some of it. May I live to have my expectation 
 verified." 
 
 Professor Geokg Cantor.' 
 
 " For many years I have in hours of leisure granted me 
 given much study to the life and works of Francis Bacon, 
 who in my eyes is one of the greatest geniuses of Chris- 
 tianity. By this I have become persuaded that the opinion, 
 so ridiculed by most scholars, that he was the author of the 
 Shakespearean dramas, is founded on truth." — (1896). 
 
 George James. 
 
 "To believe Shakspere to have written these wondrous 
 works, saturated through and through with the reforming 
 spirit of Francis Bacon, containing his philosophic theories 
 and discoveries, advocating his new philosophy over that of 
 Aristotle, containing the favorite, forceful phrases of his 
 mother, the Lady Anne, his brother Anthony, and the Earl 
 of Essex ; — to believe that William Shakspere wrote these 
 is to violate every principle of common sense, and be blind 
 
 * Five Lectures on Shakespeare. 
 
 2 Professor of Mathematics and Doctor of Philosophy in the 
 twin universities of Halle a.d. Saaie and Wittenberg.
 
 22 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON. 
 
 to truths plain as beacon lights for our guidance." * 
 — (1896). 
 
 John A. Bingham. 
 "The careful reading of your book has confirmed me in 
 the opinion, long since formed, that the author of the 
 immortal plays was foremost of living men in all the liter- 
 ature and learning of his time, and who had taken ' all 
 knowledge for his province.' " ^ — (1896). 
 
 Rev. L. C. Manchester. 
 " Only once grant that Bacon lacked imagination (he had 
 infinite imagination), that he was devoid of humor (his 
 humor was unbounded and inextinguishable), that he had no 
 leisure to write the plays (he had years of waiting for place 
 and work and years of struggle with debt), that he had no 
 poetic faculty (his noblest prose is the highest poetry in all 
 but metre), that he was cold and iinsympathetic and selfish 
 ( Sir Tobie Matthew, and Rawleigh and other contemporaries 
 did not think so) — only grant these postulates (all false) 
 and a few others, and it will be certain that he did not write 
 the plays." 2 —(1896). 
 
 Professor ? 
 
 "I am a concealed Baconian." — (1897). 
 
 Edward James Castle, Q. C. 
 " Malone twisted this apology of Chettle's into an apology 
 to Shakespeare. It is difficult to see how the language could 
 be so understood, even by one of his most ardent admirers. 
 The letter was not addressed to Shakespeare ; he was not one 
 of the play-writers ; he was a pretender in Greene's eyes, and 
 as far as one can see he was severely let alone by Chettle. 
 Of course, it is immaterial whether Chettle apologized to him, 
 
 ' ' Short Stories on the Origin of the Plays.' Birmingham, Eng. 
 
 2 In letter to us. 
 
 » UniverBity, Switzerland.
 
 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON 23 
 
 or to Peele or Lodge. But it is material to see whether a 
 whole succeBsion of writers, Malone, Steevens, Dyce, Collier, 
 Halliwell, Knight, and a host of minor authors, are so blinded 
 by their admiration for Shakespeare that they cannot read a 
 simple document correctly."* — (1897). 
 
 Thomas Davidson. 
 " For many years I have felt exactly as Whittier did, sure 
 that Shakspere did not write the Plays. I believe you have 
 proved your thesis." 2 _ (1898). 
 
 Dk. Thkodore Strater. ^ 
 " There are, in this view, many more treasures yet to be 
 gathered from Shakespeare, of the riches of which few have 
 an idea. Shakesj^eai-e is, in truth, as Vischer* calls him, '■a 
 
 yet unknown master of composition.^ " — (1898). 
 
 Birmingham (Eng.) Daily Gazette. 
 " The greatest of poets ' walked the earth unguessed at,' 
 said Matthew Arnold. He has been guessed at ever since. 
 Biographers fill up the gaps in his life much as the old 
 geographers filled up the blank spaces in the map of Africa 
 by putting elephants in place of towns ; — the biographers fill 
 up intervals of two or five years by saying — ' Perhaps,' 
 'Probably,' 'Maybe,' and 'Doubtless.' Mr. Edwin Reed 
 contends that there was an actor at Stratf ord-on- Avon, named 
 William Shakspere, and that his name ought not to be con- 
 fused with the pen-name William Shakespeare which ap- 
 peared on the printed edition of the famous plays. His 
 volume of close on 300 pages is packed with historical facts. 
 There is nothing in it about cryptograms, ciphers, and other 
 crazes ; and that is a blessing. Mr. Reed depends upon his- 
 
 1 Mr. Castle contends that Bacon and Shakspere collaborated in 
 the composition of the Plays. 
 
 2 In letter to us. 
 
 ^ A German philosopher and author of high repute. 
 ■* Friedrich Theodore Vischer, a German writer, born at Liidwigs- 
 burg in 1807; became Professor of Philosophy at Tiibingen in 1844.
 
 24 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON 
 
 tory, parallel facts, coincidences, and other things capable of 
 definition or demonstration. We purpose to select a few of 
 his points, without comment, except to say that a bare setting 
 forth of casual statements is scarcely just to the author, any 
 more than the production of a few bricks would suffice to 
 show the style and quality of an architect's designs. Mr. 
 Heed's volume is valuable as showing the cumulative evi- 
 dence in favour of Bacon, and though that evidence may be 
 successfully rebutted it must be considered as a whole before 
 its true weight can be ascertained. In order to produce a 
 good and trustworthy work Mr. Reed has studied, and he 
 quotes no fewer than 117 authorities, only eleven of whom 
 favour the Baconian theory. The remaining 106 are Shakea- 
 peareans — who unconsciously help Mr. Reed to his con- 
 clusions. 
 
 " Here we must cease. We have not mentioned one-fourth 
 of Mr. Reed's arguments, facts, and deductions, nor can we 
 mention those subjects which cannot be condensed into a 
 sentence. But we have probably said enough to show that 
 in Mr, Reed's three hundred pages there is matter for reflec- 
 tion. No doubt it is all nonsense of the saddest and sorriest 
 kind. No doubt the 300 pages of elaborate demonstration 
 can be demolished by a touch of the linger — and this makes 
 it so very surprising that no one arises and demolishes it ! 
 We prefer to leave to others a task so simple, and will 
 reserve our own energies for something more difficult." 
 — (1898). 
 
 Perct W. Ames, F. S. A. 
 
 " Shakspere has not only occupied the chief place in our 
 respect and veneration, but he has also won his way into our 
 affections, and this it is that makes his dethronement at once 
 difficult and painful, even though our better judgment tells 
 us that he was but the mask for the real author. . . We 
 can Btill speak of our Shakespeare, although with deeper
 
 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON. 25 
 
 feelings and with more rational sentiment ; but when we 
 wish to get behind those brilliant productions to have a 
 glimpse of the actual author, we think not of the common- 
 place bourgeois of Stratford, but of the poet and sage of 
 St. Albans." » — ( 1898.) 
 
 E. W. S.» 
 " That he ever cherished any ambition more exalted than 
 that of being allowed to add esquire to his name ; that it ever 
 occurred to him that he owned any right to, power over, or 
 interest in such a thing as a manuscript; that he possessed or 
 wished to possess anything in the shape of a library ; that he 
 had acquired a taste for poetry or prose, history or philos- 
 ophy ; on all these points we have abundance of conjecture 
 indeed, but of evidence fit to be trusted not one tittle. . . 
 It certainly cannot be proved that English literature owes 
 anything whatever to his pen, except perhaps the mellifluous 
 lines which in his lifetime he ordered to be cut upon his 
 tombstone."— (1899) 
 
 Pall Mall Gazette (London). 
 
 "The day has come when, rejecting fictitious lives of 
 an imaginary Shakspeare, and scrutinizing the insignificant 
 circumstances which are all that is known of him, the dis- 
 crepancy becomes more and more apparent between the 
 intellectual genius of the author of the plays and the sordid 
 and squalid characteristics of the man of Stratford." — 
 (1900). 
 
 W. H. Edwards. 
 
 " The English-speaking world has been humbugged in this 
 matter long enough."' — (1900). 
 
 1 From Baconiana, VI, 24. Mr. Ames is Secretary of the Royal 
 Society of Literature, London. 
 
 ^E. W. Smithson, author of 'Shakespeare-Bacon, An Essay.' 
 London : Swan, Sonnenschein & Co. An exceedingly interesting and 
 finely written brochure. The i>as8age, above quoted, is taken from 
 the appendix. 
 
 * Shaksper, not Shakespeare.' Cincinnati: Robert Clarke *fe Co.
 
 2 6 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON. 
 
 Samuel F. Barr. 
 
 " The Bacon-Shakspeie controversy has reached a crisis. 
 The Baconians produce a chain of circumstantial evidence 
 for their contention sufficient to carry the judgment of any 
 intelligent juror, even in a capital case ; and all the evidence 
 attainable inust be circumstantial. The Shakspereans deny 
 these proofs presented, and answer argument with vitupera- 
 tion. They nickname a controversy that began during 
 Shakspere's active life in London, when the Plays were com- 
 ing out on the stage, ' new,' ' whimsical,' and ' nonsense.* 
 They offer no proof that the unlearned actor wrote these 
 masterpieces of scholarly genius ; while you have demon- 
 strated the impossibility of an uneducated yokel having 
 written them. And yet the myth-worshippers shout Hallelu- 
 jahs to their idol and cling to their credulity. In this they 
 are not alone. 
 
 " But all myths must yield in time, if combated: Slavery 
 as a divine institution, polygamy, witchcraft, for ages held 
 men in bondage, relying on immemorial prescription, general 
 custom, and the sacred law. Who does not now despise any 
 one who tolerates, practises or defends tliese hoary super- 
 stitions ? Belief in none of these exploded follies and 
 crimes is less degrading to the mind than a continuance in 
 the myth that an unlearned actor who left no literary 
 remains, no books, no members of his family able to read or 
 write, whose parents made marks for their signatures, and 
 whose active money-making life excludes all possibility of 
 needful self-education, produced these learned and phil- 
 osophical masterpieces, — unless a greater degradation is 
 displayed in rejecting the now overwhelming evidence that 
 these Plays were conceived by a man who, even in youth, 
 took ' all knowledge ' for his province, and whose astonish- 
 ing genius and vigorous intellect made him easily the first 
 scholar of his time, and the teacher for all time." ^ — (1901). 
 
 ^ In letter to us.
 
 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON. 27 
 
 William A. Sutton, S. J. 
 
 " Sir Francis Cruise has been for many years what may be 
 called the Apostle of Baconianism in Ireland. He it was 
 who made a convert of Judge Henn. He found him one 
 day, when sick, reading Shakespeare. When the doctor 
 appeared, the learned judge closed the book, saying that he 
 found the immortal dramatist a great solace in the tedious- 
 liess of illness. ' But,' said Sir Francis, ' are you sure that 
 the dramatist was really named Shakespeare ? For my part, 
 I am quite sure that tiie Stratford player never wrote a line 
 of the plays or poems.' Sir Fi-ancis describes with great 
 humor how the judge looked at him, as if he thought he was 
 a lunatic, while at the same time evidently thinking of the 
 probable consequences of being attended in his illness by a 
 man capable of such fantastic notions. However, after 
 some conversation and a course of reading prescribed by his 
 physician, the invalid became what he remained to the end, 
 an enthusiastic supporter and propagator of the only rational 
 solution of the Shakespearean mystery. 
 
 " Some two years ago. Judge Henn met an Anglican dig- 
 nitary at a country house in Galway, who showed signs of 
 pain and repugnance when spoken to about Bacon as the 
 undoubted author of Shake-speare, whereupon the subject 
 was dropped. But the next day, when the canon was leav- 
 ing, he consented to take with him Reed's ' Bacon vs. Shak- 
 spere.' Soon after, in a letter which the judge read for me, 
 he cordially thanked him for the great service rendered, and 
 added : " I am quite sure now that the player Shakspere 
 never wrote a line of the works commonly ascribed to him.'" 
 
 '—(1901). 
 
 W. H. Mallock. 
 
 " The mere theory that Bacon was the real author of the 
 plays, though the mass of Shakespeare's readers still set it 
 down as a delusion, does not, indeed, contain anything ossen- 
 
 * From Baconiana, July, 1901.
 
 28 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON, 
 
 tially shocking to common senae. On the contrary, it is gen- 
 erally recognized that on purely a priori grounds there is 
 less to shock common sense in the idea that those wonderful 
 compositions were the work of a scholar, a philosopher, a 
 statesman, and a profound man of the world than there is in the 
 idea that they were the work of a notoriously ill-educated 
 actor, who seems to have found some difficulty in signing his 
 own name. ^ — (1901). 
 
 Annie L. Edwards. 
 " The Baconian theory is a search for truth, a study in 
 evolution, constructive, not destructive, a part of the arch- 
 seological spirit of the age that insists upon a scientific exam- 
 ination of all traditions and relics in order to have a 
 satisfying reason for its faith. The Bacon-Shakspere Ques- 
 tion should at least be frankly acknowledged to be an open 
 one by both parties, and as such presented to the younger 
 generation, who cannot afford to start with the old unquali- 
 fied belief of Shakespeareans." ^ — (1901), 
 
 A. P. SiNNETT. 
 
 " The difficulty hitherto of getting a fair hearing for the 
 mere literary argument has chiefly arisen from the illogical 
 resentment shown by many people at the bare idea of de- 
 throning a national idol. Shakespeare has so long been 
 thought of as a genius of the very foremost order that any 
 suggestion, tending to prove that he was a very common- 
 place person in reality, is treated as though it involved an 
 attempt to detract from the sublimity of the works bearing 
 his name. But in reason it must be conceded that we worship 
 the memory of Shakespeare because we admire Hamlet, King 
 Lear, and the rest. We do not admire the plays because any 
 jjarticular man wrote them. . . . The question is still one 
 which most English newspapers and periodicals are afraid to 
 discuss freely for fear of offending the blind prejudice above 
 
 ^ From Nineteenth Century and After. 
 2 In letter to us.
 
 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON. 29 
 
 referred to. Orthodox Shaksperean biographers simply 
 ignore the all important question as though it were a craze 
 in notorious antagonism to well-known facte, like the idea 
 that the earth is flat, and in this way the minds of people 
 who might be capable of independent judgment, if they had 
 the evidence before them, are left in complete ignorance of 
 the prodigious force residing in the Baconian argument — 
 unless, indeed, they have gone out of their way to make a 
 special study of the Baconian books." ' — (1901). 
 
 Mrs. Helen Hinton Stewart. 
 
 Lesson to English School-boys. 
 
 Shaksper. 
 "To gain command of English words and every grammar rule, 
 'Tis best to be a butcher's son, and never go to school. 
 
 To form good plays in perfect style, and full of classic knowledge,^ 
 'Tis best to be a poacher bold, and never go to college. 
 
 To write of ladies, lords and dukes, of kings and kingly sport, 
 'Tis best to be a common man, and never go to court. 
 
 To write about philosophy, and law, and medicine, 
 
 'Tis best to stand at horses' heads, and never read a line. 
 
 To treat of foreign lands in strains that all men must applaud, 
 'Tis best to stay in England, and never go abroad. 
 
 To prove that study cannot be ' deep-searched with saucy looks,' 
 'Tis best to use a crib, and shun all Greek and Latin books. 
 
 To scale the heights of human bliss and sound the depths of woe, 
 'Tis best to make a steady ' pile,' and never let it go. 
 
 When come to ripe maturity and genius has full play, 
 'Tis best to lead an easy life, and lay the pen away. 
 
 To show that ' knowledge is the wing whereby we fly to heaven,' 
 'Tis best that to your own dear child no lesson should be given. 
 
 To leave behind immortal fame as England's greatest bard, 
 'Tis best to own no manuscripts and die of ' drinking hard.' 
 
 Bacon. 
 To win injustice and contempt from every biassed mind, 
 'Tis best to be the ' wisest and the brightest of mankind.' 
 
 1 From the National Review, August, 1901.
 
 30 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON. 
 
 Z' Envoi Seritux. 
 
 Shake-Speare. 
 
 To warn the strong, to teach the proud, to give new knowledge scope, 
 'Twas best to use a nom-de-plume, and write in faith and hope 
 That future ages, wiser grown, would learn the royal rule. 
 That knowledge does not come to those who never go to school."* 
 
 — (1901). 
 
 Judge Webb. 
 
 "Nothing nowadays is sacred. Here, as elsewhere, the 
 higher criticism has been at work. Difficulties in the way of 
 the orthodox belief have stimulated inquiry ; inquiry has sug- 
 gested doubt ; and doubt has largely developed into dis- 
 belief. . . The author of the plays himself suggests the 
 only way of determining the question. In the Sonnets he 
 complains that every word of his all but told his name, and 
 the American school of critics has taken and acted on the 
 hint. The English school had ransacked ancient literature 
 to show the familiarity of Shakespeare with the classics ; the 
 American school, on the other hand, has ransacked the 
 works of Bacon, to show the astonishing parallelisms between 
 them and the works of Shakespeare. The old school at the 
 utmost threw a doubt on the pretensions of the half-educated 
 young man who came up from Stratford ; but it is only on 
 the labors of the new school that we can rely for a demon- 
 stration that Shakespeare was another name for Bacon." * 
 — (1902). 
 
 Thos. Coverdale. 
 
 " I am one of those who believe that Bacon wrote Shake- 
 speare, and who do not require hidden messages and other 
 mysteries to strengthen the faith that is in them. In writing 
 to the local newspapers here on the subject, I have plainly 
 
 * From the Literary World (London) April 5, 1901. 
 
 2 From The Mystery of William Shakespeare, A Summary of Evidence, 
 page 237. His Honor was Regius Professor of Law and Public Orator 
 in the University of Dublin; Sometime Fellow of Trinity College. 
 The recent death of Judge Webb (1903) is a calamity, not only to 
 his admiring countrymen, but also, in the department of letters, to 
 the world. His book, both in manner and matter, is an honor to 
 our age. 
 
 r*
 
 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON. 31 
 
 expressed the opinion that these ciphers and cryptograms 
 and infolded meanings do but serve to distract attention 
 from the main issue, and afford material to the scoffer." ^ 
 — Christchurch, New Zealand (1902). 
 
 George C. Bompas. 
 
 " The facts of Shakspere's life render his authorship of the 
 plays so inconceivable that Schlegel pronounces it ' a mere 
 fabulous story, a blind and extravagant error.' But in these 
 plays the genius of Bacon is manifest ; they bear the stamp 
 of his character, they reflect his intellect, they speak his 
 language, they mirror his life."^ — (1902). 
 
 The Daily News (London). 
 *' There is nothing very outrageous in the supposition that 
 the same mind might have given birth to the Essays and 
 * Hamlet.' "—(1902). 
 
 R. B. Mabston. 
 
 " I am not a Baconian, but I have a perfectly open mind 
 on the matter. I have no objection at all to being convinced 
 that Sir Francis Bacon wrote the splendid dramas attributed 
 to Shakespeare ; it is so much easier to suppose from our un- 
 questionable knowledge of his life and genius that he viight 
 have written them, than to accept from the unquestioned 
 little that we know of Shakspere and his life that he could 
 have done so. 
 
 " It is unnecessary to refer at length to the extraordinary 
 similarity in the knowledge of law, science, art, politics, his- 
 tory, literature, and every other branch of human under- 
 standing, exhibited by Shakespeare and Bacon." — (1902). 
 
 A Journalist. 
 
 " The enterprise of making book-reviewing a daily news 
 patent precludes long notices. It also, as you will undcr- 
 
 • la letter to us. 
 
 ' From 'The Problem of the Shakespeare Play*,* p. 116.
 
 32 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON 
 
 stand, precludes real criticism of books, which, like yours, 
 require profound and prolonged study, and considerable 
 space for their examination ; and, again, it compels conces- 
 sions to the invincible superficiality of the vulgar. 
 
 " So, in saying that it makes no practical difference who 
 wrote the plays, I was adopting the vulgar flippancy to ex- 
 cuse, vis-a-vis ray newspaper-sceptics, my own earnest interest 
 in the problem."!— (1902). 
 
 Lord Penzance. 
 •' It is desperately hard, nay, impossible to believe that 
 this uninstructed, untutored youth, as he came from Strat- 
 ford, should have written these plays ; and almost as hard, as 
 it seems to me, to believe that he should have rendered him- 
 self capable of writing them by elaborate study after- 
 wards. . . The difticulty of imagining this young man to 
 have converted himself in a few years from a state bordering 
 on ignorance into a deeply read student, master of French 
 and Italian, as well as of Greek and Latin, and capable of 
 quoting and borrowing largely from writers in all these 
 languages, is almost insuperable. . . His name once 
 removed from the controversy, there will not, I think, be 
 much question as to the lawyer to whose pen the Shake- 
 epeare plays are to be attributed."^ — (1903). 
 
 JOSIAH P. QuiNCY. 
 
 " What it has seemed to me most politic to undertake is to 
 break the force of the silly contempt which has been lavished 
 upon such sober arguments as you have given to the world. 
 Such arguments are answered only when they are answered 
 at their best, and this, so far as I know, has never been done. 
 For this best is the cumulative force of hundreds of indica- 
 tions, any one of which, if it stood singly, might easily be 
 
 1 In letter to us, from the literary editor of one of tlie great lead- 
 ing daily newspapers of the U. S. 
 
 ^ From 'The Bacon-Shakspere Controversy, a Judicial Summing- 
 up,' by Sir James Plaisted Wilde, Baron Penzance, Member of 
 House of Peers, etc., etc.
 
 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON 33 
 
 explained. If the traditional theory is destined to collapse, it 
 will require not only many sturdy blows, but also long and 
 patient waiting; for the Stratford deer-stealer has been so 
 wrapped about with human sentiment that foolish vituperation 
 is meted to those who dare to suggest that his coronation 
 robes are a poor fit, and seem better adapted to a bulkier 
 personage."^ — (1903). 
 
 AuTHOE OP * Is IT Shakespeare ? ' 
 
 " In my opinion we are not far from the time when our 
 fellow-countrymen and the English-speaking peoples through- 
 out the world will unanimously admit that the most wonder- 
 ful genius that ever spoke and wrote the English language 
 was the man who combined in one brain and produced from 
 one brain the Essays and Philosophy of Francis Bacon and the 
 Plays, Sonnets and Poems of William Shakespeare — un- 
 doubtedly the greatest miracle of intellect the world has ever 
 seen, and a most extraordinary termination of the greatest 
 literary mystification that ever passed unchallenged for 
 nearly three hundred years." ^ — (1903). 
 
 JOUENAL DBS DkBATS, PaRIS. 
 
 "The Baconian thesis has up to this day been asserted in 
 presence of three successive generations by able and most 
 sincere writers. . . . Such a controversy is therefore not dis- 
 dainfully to be set aside, nor a priori declared unworthy of 
 consideration." — (1903). 
 
 Rev. Francis Howe Johnson. 
 
 " The main lines of the argument for the hypothesis that 
 Francis Bacon was the author of the plays known as Shakes- 
 peare's are to me most reasonable. 
 
 " First. To believe that the man, William Shakspere, as 
 known by the historical data that have come down to us, 
 
 ^ In letter to us. 
 
 ' From ' Is it Shakespeare ? ' p. 335.
 
 34 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON. 
 
 was the author of these plays, seems to me little short of 
 monstrous. 
 
 '■'■Second. If we reject this popular tradition and are not 
 satisfied in the vagueness of an unknown authorship, we 
 must, if we can, fix upon some contemporary who had a 
 mind deep enough, wide enough, trained in all the wisdom 
 of the time, a man great enough, both as Philosopher and 
 Poet, to make the hypothesis that he was their author worth 
 while. 
 
 " Third. Francis Bacon was such a man. 
 
 " Fourth. There are good and sufficient reasons why, if he 
 wrote the Plays, he should have wished to keep his author- 
 ship a profound secret." * — (1904). 
 
 Judge Arthur A. Putnam.. 
 " Perhaps in the whole history of literature there has not 
 been an instance more notable of rank unreason than the 
 persistency, not to say infuriated stubborness, with which 
 intelligent men, in the blazing light of improbabilities, adhere 
 to the idea of the unlettered, penurious, and litigious Shaks- 
 pere, who was never known to own a book, or write a 
 sentence, or attend a school, being the author of the greatest 
 literary works of all time." ^ — (1904), 
 
 J. Warren Keifer. '^ 
 " I cannot accord it to him who, though rich, did not 
 educate his children, and who, though he sought fame through 
 a coat-of-arms claimed to have been earned by the valor of 
 his great-grandfather, nowhere, not even in his last will and 
 testament, claimed the fame of authorship, — such author- 
 ship, — and whose sole posthumous anxiety centred on his 
 dust and bones remaining undisturbed in the chancel of 
 Stratford church." *—( 1904). 
 
 ^ Author of the learned work, ' Is it Reality? ' Andover, Mass. 
 ^ In letter to us. 
 
 * Formerly Speaker of the National House of Representatives, 
 Washington, D. C. 
 
 * From the Open Court, Feb. 1904.
 
 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON. 35 
 
 George Mooke. 
 
 " You ask me for the story of my conversion to the 
 Baconian theory. Well, I believe all conversions are very 
 much like Saint Paul's. An idea comes upon one suddenly, 
 on the road to Damascus. The first time I heard Bacon 
 mentioned as the possible author of the Plays and Poems, 
 the idea lit up in my brain, and I felt certain that it could 
 not have been the mummer. Nature's rhythms seem ir- 
 regular, but irregular things only seem irregular because we 
 do not know them sufficiently ; they conform to a law, and 
 that a mummer should have written the plays seemed to me to 
 run counter to every rhythm. The moment it was suggested 
 that Bacon had written them, I felt as many must have felt 
 when they heard for the first time that the earth goes round 
 the sun. Things began to get concentric again ; hitherto 
 they had all been eccentric. The first book I read was Judge 
 Webb's, a good book for beginners, but when one knows the 
 main lines of the argument there are no books but yours. 
 Your books are always upon my table, and I constantly refer 
 to them, and they give me the greatest pleasure. You ad- 
 vance arguments that are very striking, and I should like to 
 point out those that have influenced me, but if I did so, I 
 should be attaching too much importance to a link. No one 
 argument is conclusive ; it is the mass of evidence, and I am 
 sure you will agree with me on this point." ^ — (1904). 
 
 Hon. William Waldorf Astor. 
 
 " You ask ray opinion, in a few words, upon the Bacon- 
 Shakspere controversy, which has been a study of immense 
 interest to me for nearly twenty years. In examining a 
 problem of such importance to English literature as the 
 authorship of the plays attributed to Shakspere one can 
 hardly use too great deliberation. I felt this so strongly that 
 it was only after about ten years' reading and reflection that 
 I became a convinced Baconian. I have been brought to 
 
 ^ In letter to ua.
 
 36 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON. 
 
 this conclusion mainly by the impossibility of reconciling 
 the facts we know concerning the life of the man of Stratford 
 with the technical and universal knowledge inherent in the 
 plays." '— Cliveden (1904). 
 
 Appleton Mokgan, LL. D. 
 
 " What I have never been able to find out is, why the 
 « Higher Ciiticism ' (i. e., the authorship question) of Shakes- 
 peare is ' ridiculous,' ' preposterous,' etc., etc., as every book- 
 reviewer and college professor assures us that it is. It may 
 be most highly improbable that two burglaries in different 
 localities were committed by the same burglar; but if the 
 measurements of the foot-prints in both cases are identical, 
 the theory that both were committed by the same burglar 
 may be — such a theory is — neither * ridiculous ' nor < pre- 
 posterous.' 
 
 " If these gentlemen claim, later on, that they denied the 
 whole proposition simply to bring out the facts, I should, 
 however, highly approve of their course." - — (1904). 
 
 Charles F. Libby. -^ 
 " In the face of all the facts you have presented, I am un- 
 able to believe that the man Shakspere could have written 
 these master-pieces, but on the contrary find much to con- 
 firm the theory that Bacon didP — (1904). 
 
 GUILLAUMK ApOLLINAIRE. 
 
 "On the 23rd April, 1616, there died an obscure English 
 actor, named Shekspere, to whom, on account of the similar- 
 ity of the names, people afterwards attributed the works of a 
 
 ^ In letter to us. 
 
 2 In letter to us. President of the New York Shakespeare 
 Society; author of 'Venus and Adonis,' a study in the Warwick- 
 Khire dialect; The Shakespearean Myth; Some Shakespearean 
 Commentators; The Law of Literature; Editor of the Bankside 
 iShakespeare, etc. 
 
 2 Portland, Maine.
 
 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON 37 
 
 more illustrious unknown, wlio signed himself ' William 
 Shakespeare.' " ^ — (1904). 
 
 George F. Talbot.' 
 " Since the discussion has been taken up by such com- 
 petent disputants as yourself, so thoroughly versed as you 
 are in the critical examination of evidence, so conversant 
 with the whole compass of classical and historic literature 
 and legend upon which the writer of the Shakespearean 
 dramas must have fed his creative imagination, so qualified 
 by a logical and judicial mind, the volunteer counsel on the 
 other side, who have put more passion than reason in their 
 arguments, and seem more satisfied that the crowd is with 
 them than they are with the strength of their case, might as 
 well abandon their line of defence, which has been to accuse 
 you of being half-educated, cranky and insane. . . . The 
 personage to whom you assign the just fame of these marvel- 
 ous productions seems to have been in every way born, 
 educated and equipped for such a work. He had the 
 requisite learning, the speculative aptitude and habit, the 
 rhetorical skill and poetic feeling that the most cursory 
 reading discloses as the everywhere dominant tone in this 
 grandest diapason of human speech." — (1904.) 
 
 W. H. W. 
 
 " This seat. No. 33, summing up to seven, should bring 
 good fortune. I am pleased to have seen your work-table 
 in this great library. Now I can picture you at work with a 
 proper background to my picture. Some day the window 
 through which light streamed upon your illuminating page 
 will be treasured with its golden glass commemorating your 
 achievements, and the alcove behind the window will be 
 dedicated to the literature which has brought back to Francis, 
 Lord Verulam, his own divine poems." ^ 
 
 1 Original: " Le 23 avril 1616 mourait un obscur acteur anjjlais 
 nomine Shekspere, auquel, a cause de la similitude des noma, oa 
 attribua plus tard les ceuvres d'vin inconnu plus illustre qui signait 
 William Shakespeare." L'EUiiOP#.EN, 21, 1. 04 
 
 ^Author and retired lawyer, Portland, Me. 
 
 ^Barton Room of the Boston (Mass.) Public Library. 
 
 4313S6
 
 38 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON 
 
 On the Otheb Side. 
 
 We now cite some opinions, as representative in character 
 as possible, on the other side. They will also serve as ma- 
 terials for the history of this controversy, when the history 
 shall be written. 
 
 Thomas Caelyle.i 
 
 " There is not the least possibility of truth in the notion 
 Miss Delia Bacon has taken up ; the hope of ever proving it, 
 or finding the least document that countenances it is equal to 
 that of vanquishing the wind-mills by stroke of lance. 
 
 " Lord Bacon could as easily have created this planet as 
 he could have written 'Hamlet.' " — (1853). 
 
 Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. 
 "It proves an unlimited power of credulity among the 
 class to which its writer belongs, and throws some light upon 
 that extraordinary mental process by which men of a crotch- 
 ety turn of mind can set up pure unreason in the plac of 
 plain truth ; but it proves nothing whatever about Francis 
 Bacon, nor throws the smallest glimmer of illumination on 
 those mysterious productions called Shakespeare's Plays." ^ 
 
 — (1S5G). 
 
 Rev. Leonard Bacon. 
 
 "The great world does not care a sixpence who wrote 
 
 'Hamlet.'" =^—(1856). 
 
 ^ Carlyle's judgmeut of a man's character aud abilities was often 
 very eccentric, as the following specimens will show: "Keats is 
 'a curried dead dog'; Shelley, 'a ghastly object'; Coleridge, 'a 
 puffy, obstructed-looking old man, talking in a maudlin sleep an 
 infinite deal of nothing' ; Lamb, ' a puir cratur, with a thin streak 
 of cockney-wit, nothing humorous but his dress ' ; Walter Scott, ' a 
 toothless retailer of old wives' fables ' ; Sir Robert Peel, ' a plausible 
 -fox ' ; Lord Melbourne, ' a monkey ' ; Brougham, ' an eternal 
 grinder of commonplace'; J. W. Crocker, 'an unhanged hound'; 
 Lord John Kussell, 'a tuinspit of good pedigree'; Wordsworth, 
 'stooping to extract a spiritual catsup from mushrooms that were 
 little better than toadstools.' " Notes and Queries^ 1895. 
 
 ^ Nearly fifty years have elapsed since the above was written, and 
 yet the plays are to all intents and purposes as " mysterious " now 
 as ever. The key to them is in Bacon's works, as our readers will 
 soon perceive and acknowledge. 
 
 ^ In a letter to his sister in England, dissuading her from her en- 
 terprise.
 
 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON, 39 
 
 North American Review. 
 
 " There is in Miss Bacon's work a spirit of subtile analysis, 
 a deep moral insight, and a penetrating research which, 
 separated from the monomania of her particular theory, en- 
 lists our admiration, and is adapted to throw much light upon 
 Shakespeare's genius. It makes us feel that there are in 
 him vast depths of thought and presentations of great human 
 and social laws of the development of which, as yet, we have 
 scarcely dreamed."^ — (1857). 
 
 George H. Townsend. 
 
 "The Baconians are assailants of genius; they are hope- 
 lessly ignorant, and their very souls shudder at every kind 
 of mental superiority. . . . Dirty work requires its peculiar 
 instruments ; none more readily attack the fame of others 
 than those who have no reputation of their own to lose. . . . 
 Have we no literary police ? Oh, for an hour with the giant 
 Christopher North ! "- Oh, for some swashing blows from his 
 rhetorical cudgel to crush this fungus ! Another, and per- 
 haps a better plan would be, to gibbet the offenders." — 
 (1857). 
 
 ' The Athen^um.' 
 
 " Our readers heard two or three years ago that an Amer- 
 ican lady had announced in the intellectual city of New York 
 a discovery that Will the Jester was a rogue strutting through 
 space in his master's clothes. They enjoyed the story, and 
 they laughed still more when, about a year ago, the un- 
 memoried" W. II. Smith reproduced the American hallucina- 
 tion as his own, in a ponderous letter to Lord Ellsmere. But 
 
 ^ A remarkable prophecy, yet to be fulfilled. 
 
 2 Christopher North was, to be sure, a great critic, but he did not 
 hesitate to call Tennyson, on the appearance of the first book of 
 Tennyson's poems, an owl, and to say, " All that he wants is to be 
 shot, stuffed, and stuck in a glass case, to be made immortal in a 
 museum." 
 
 3 Mr. Smith is not "unmemoried," but, it is safe to say, the 
 avithor of this gratuitous and disgraceful insult to his revered 
 memory will be. None but ghouls insult the dead.
 
 40 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON. 
 
 the jest is now stale. Yesterday's champagne is detestable. 
 The rocket is burnt, and only a singed stick remains. 
 
 " Mr. Smith denies the appropriation of Miss Delia Bacon's 
 theory, and assures us that he never heard the name of Miss 
 Bacon until Sept., 1856. The question may be of slight im- 
 portance 'which of two given individuals first conceived a 
 crazy notion." — (1857). 
 
 Bishop Wordsworth. 
 *' It has been a frequent subject of complaint that so little 
 has come down to us respecting our poet's life. For my 
 part, I am inclined to doubt whether it would be desirable 
 for us to be more fully informed concerning it than we 
 actually are." i—( 1864). 
 
 Alphonse de Lama-rtikte. 
 " Shakspere's ' Romeo and Juliet ' explains to us the en- 
 thusiasm that the poor holder of horses at the door of a 
 theatre has inspired in the most cultivated nation of the 
 universe." 2— (1865). 
 
 James Speddixg. 
 " I believe that the author of the Plays, published in 1623, 
 was a man called William Shakespeare. It was believed by 
 those wlio had the best means of knowing, and I know noth- 
 ing which should lead me to doubt it. ... I doubt whether 
 there are five lines together to be found in Bacon which 
 could be mistaken for Shakespeare, or five lines in Shakes- 
 peare which could be mistaken for Bacon, by one who was 
 familiar with the several styles and practiced in such obser- 
 vation." 3( 1867). 
 
 *^ We are sorry to note that Dr. H. H. Furness, our variorum 
 editor of Shake-speare, shares this extraordinary opinion with the 
 Bishop. He even goes farther and expresses the hope that we may 
 never learn anything more than we now know of Shakspere per- 
 sonally. How can this attitude of mind be explained consist- 
 ently with one's self-respect? 
 
 ^ From Shakespeare ei son Oeuvres. 
 
 3 In letter to Hon. Nathaniel Holmes, published in Holmes' 
 ♦Authorship of Shakespeare,' 1887, pp. 616-17. 
 Mr. Spedding is chiefly and favorably known as the biographer
 
 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON. 41 
 
 Harper's New Monthly Magazine. 
 « That the player was the author of these dramas is as well 
 fixed as any fact in literary history can be." — (1867). 
 
 and editor of Francis Bacon. He devoted nearly forty years of his 
 life to tliis special work. He seems also to liave been well ac- 
 quainted with Shakespeare. It must be admitted, then, that by 
 training, at least, he was the best fitted man of recent times to give 
 an authoritative opinion on the subject in controversy. And he 
 did give it without the slightest qualification against us before his 
 death. 
 
 The world, however, is too full of just such instances of extra- 
 ordinary self-deception to warrant us, after a thorough inquiry of 
 our own, to surrender our conviction to his. The considerations 
 he advances in his support are extremely unsatisfactory. For ex- 
 ample, in this matter of style (one of two points only we have space 
 now to consider), we are reasonably certain that he was in error, 
 and we think we can make our readers equally certain of the error 
 also. To this end we submit herein five passages from each of the 
 two sets of works, and challenge anybody to apportion them to 
 their respective authors simply on grounds of style: 
 
 " Contrary is it with hypocrites and impostors, for they in the 
 church and before the people set themselves on fire and are carried, 
 as it were, out of themselves, and, becoming as men inspired with 
 holy furies, they set heaven and earth together." 
 
 " It is a wonderful thing to see the semblable coherence of his 
 men's spirits and his own ; they, by observing him, do bear them- 
 selves like foolish justices; he, by conversing with them, is turned 
 into a justice like serving man. ... It is certain that either wis© 
 bearing or ignorant carriage is caught as men take diseases, one of 
 another; therefore, let men take heed of their company." 
 
 "I have thought that some of Nature's journeymen had made 
 men, and not made them well; they imitated humanity so abom- 
 inably." 
 
 "Novelty only is in request; it is as dangerous to be aged in any 
 kind of course as it is virtuous to be constant in any undertaking. 
 There is scarce truth enough alive to make societies secure, but 
 security enough to make fellowship accursed." 
 
 " Faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling 
 cymbal, where there is no love." 
 
 " Gentle whispers, which from more ancient traditions came at 
 length into the flutes and trumpets of the Greeks." 
 
 "Thus hast thou hanged our life on brittle pins. 
 To let us know it will not bear our sins." 
 
 " If money go before, all ways do lie open." 
 
 " It may be you will do posterity good, if, out of the carcass of 
 dead and rotten greatness, as out of Samson's lion, there be honey 
 gathered for future times." 
 
 " False of heart, light of ear, bloody of hand; hog in sloth, fox 
 in stealth, wolf in greediness, dog in madness, lion in prey." 
 
 Our conclusion is, that when our two authors are not on the 
 poetical tripod, their respective literary styles are indistinguish- 
 able. 
 
 Mr. Spedding had one serious limitation for the work to which
 
 42 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON 
 
 S. A. Allibone. 
 *' I have earned the right by hard labor to assert that there 
 is not in the 1100 pages of Delia Bacon and Judge Holmes 
 the shadow of a shade of an argument to support their wild 
 and most absurd hypothesis." ' — (1871). 
 
 Prof. Hiram Corson. -' 
 
 "That William Shakspere of Stratford-upon-Avon, Gent., 
 was the author of these dramas every one who is willing to 
 accept testimony thereimto pertaining, equally strong and 
 and conclusive as the testimony that is requisite in a civilized 
 court of justice to hang a man, can lind such testimony in 
 abundance in the volume before us." — (1875). 
 
 Scribner's Monthly Magazine. 
 "To admit the Baconian theory of Shakespeare, except as 
 a piece of ingenious pleasailtry, demands a brain so addled 
 with theory as to be incapable of literary judgment, or a 
 (capacity for credulity not given to mere commonplace mor- 
 tals." — (1875). 
 
 F. J. FURNIVALL. 
 
 "The idea of Lord Bacon's having written Shakspere's 
 
 he devoted his life; be never could uuderstand Bacon when Bacon 
 made any personal reference to poetry or the drama. For examples : 
 
 Bacon wrote a letter to Sir John Davies, begging a favor, and 
 closing with the entreaty, " be good to concealed poets;" Spedding 
 says of it, " the allusion to 'concealed poets' I cannot understand." 
 
 Bacon kept a commonplace book, tilled with words, phrases and 
 sentences, applicable (many of them) to dialogue only, though he 
 wrote no known dialogues ; Spedding cites hundreds of these entries, 
 and then " wonders " lor what purpose they were written. 
 
 Bacon announced his method of interpreting nature (human 
 nature) as a secret, new to the world and not to be disclosed for 
 several generations; Spedding acknowledges the existence of the 
 secret and discusses it, but in the end confesses his ignorance of 
 what it means. 
 
 Bacon says that any person, undertaking to make use of his new 
 method, must wear a mask ; Spedding says, " I cannot say that I 
 clearly understand the sentence; but I think it must refer to the 
 necessity of using popular ideas for popular purposes [!]." 
 
 ' From his 'Dictionary of Authors,' p. 2048. 
 
 2 Cornell University.
 
 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON. 43 
 
 plays can be entertained only by folk who know nothing 
 whatever of either writer, or are crackt, or who enjoy the 
 paradox or joke. ... I doubt whether any so idiotic sug- 
 gestion had ever been made before, or will ever be made 
 again, with regard to either Bacon or Shakspere. The tom- 
 foolery of it is infinite." ' — (1877). 
 
 " Americans trained in English literature are as likely to 
 hold that the world was made yesterday by a monkey out ol 
 three pounds of putty as they are to maintain that Bacon 
 wrote Shakspere's works." ^ 
 
 "Providence is merciful, and the U. S. folk are tolerant; 
 you'd have been strung up on the nearest lamp-post else."^ 
 
 James Freeman Clarke. 
 *' When we ask whether it would have been easier for tht 
 author of the philosophy to have composed the drama, or the 
 dramatic poet to have written the philosophy, the answer 
 will depend upon which is the greater of the two. The 
 greater includes the less, but the less cannot include tnte 
 greater. . . . Great as are the thoughts of the Novum 
 Organum^ they are inferior to that world of thought which is 
 in the drama. We can easily conceive that Shakespeare, 
 having produced in his prime the wonders and glories of the 
 plays, should in his after leisure have developed the leading 
 ideas of the Baconian philosophy. But it is difficult to 
 imagine that Bacon, while devoting his main strength to 
 politics, to law, to philosophy, should have, as a mere pas- 
 time of his leisure, produced in his idle moments the greatest 
 intellectual work ever done on earth."* — (1881). 
 
 1 From the Preface to ' The Leopold Shakspere,' p. cxxviii. 
 
 2 From the Arena Magazine, Boston, Mass. 
 
 'In letter to us. 
 
 * From the North American Review. Mr, Clarke is said to have 
 regretted before his death the writing of this article, in which 
 Bacon's philosophical works are tentatively ascribed to Shakes- 
 peare. And yet Shake-speare did write the Novum Or^anum, iu 
 the same sense as we say that George Eliot wrote Adam Bede. 
 Mr. Clarke simply builded better than he knew, for he saw identity 
 without fully apprehending what it meant.
 
 44 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON. 
 
 Prof. Paul Staffer. 
 
 "The famous paradox, brought forward from time to time 
 by some lunatic." »— (1880). 
 
 Eduard Engel. 
 
 " The Bacon craze has obtained so wide a circulation that 
 it must not at the present time be passed over with the silence 
 of disgust and contempt; but the American champions of the 
 imposture, who have followed in Delia Bacon's wake, shall 
 not receive the honor [!] of personal mention here. 
 
 " So far as an approach to coherent opinion can be got out 
 of this many-voiced fools' chorus, where each leading fool 
 extols his own pet crotchet, we may characterize those who 
 promote this stupidity, and those who agree with them, as 
 follows : orthodox-minded lunatics, distinguished from such 
 as tenant asylums in that they are still at large ; secondly, 
 indolent ignoramuses ; . . . and thirdly, a crew of unreason- 
 ing news-mongers and purveyors of social rubbish. People 
 of this brain-sick habit, maniacs, are as hard to convince 
 of their error as they who imagine themselves to be God 
 Almighty, or the Emperor of China, or the Pope." ^ — 
 (1883). 
 
 Edwin A. Abbott. 
 " The Promus seems to render it highly probable, if not 
 absolutely certain, that Francis Bacon in the year 1594 had 
 either heard or read Shakespeare's Romeo z,udL Juliet. Let the 
 reader turn to the passage in that play where Friar Law- 
 rence lectures Romeo on too early rising, and note the 
 italicised words : 
 
 ' But where unbruised youth with unstuff'd brain 
 Doth couch his limbs, W^^xq golden sleep doth reign, 
 Therefore thy earliness doth me assure 
 Thou art up-roused by some distemperature.' ii. 3, 40. 
 
 Now let him turn to entries 1207 and 1215 in the following 
 
 1 Professor at the Faculte des Lettres of Grenoble, France. 
 
 * From his history of English Literature, p. 159. We may gauge 
 Herr Engel 's capacity to understand the literaiy men of England 
 by what he says of Bacon : " Of all the better-known writers of the 
 sixteenth century, even prose writers, Bacon was the most i>rosaic,
 
 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON 45 
 
 pages, and he will find that Bacon, among a number of 
 phrases relating to early rising, has these words, almost con- 
 secutively, 'golden sleep' and ' uprouse.' One of these 
 entries would prove little or nothing ; but any one accustomed 
 to evidence will perceive that t7vo of these entries constitute 
 a coincidence amounting almost to a demonstration that 
 either ( 1 ) Bacon and Shakespeare borrowed from some com- 
 mon and at present unknown source; or (2) one of the two 
 borrowed from the other." ^ — (1883). 
 
 Richard Grant White. 
 
 "None the less it is a lunacy, which should be treated with 
 all the skill and the tenderness which modern medical science 
 and humanity has developed. Proper retreats should be 
 provided, and ambulances kept ready with horses harnessed, 
 and when symptoms of the Bacon-Shakspere craze manifest 
 themselves, the patient should be immediately carried off to 
 an asylum, furnished with pens, ink and paper, a copy of 
 Bacon's works, one of the Shakespeare Plays, and one of 
 Mrs. Cowden Clarke's Concordance ; and the literary results 
 should be received for publication with deference, and then 
 — committed to the flames. In this way the innocent victims 
 of the malady might be soothed and tranquilized, and the 
 world protected against the debilitating influence of tomes 
 of tedious twaddle." 2— (1886). 
 
 the most insipid, and the most pedantic. There are many thinga 
 that are clever in Bacon's Essays, . . . but, with a few sensible 
 aphorisms, an incomparably greater number of common-places and 
 platitudes." 
 
 ' Unfortunately for this clever argument the word up-rouse is 
 not found in the Promus. 
 
 2 The correct measure of Mr. White's abilities as a critic may be 
 found in his book entitled " Shakspere Studies," containing not 
 only what is cited above, but also the following: " That Shakspere 
 did his work with no other purpose whatever, moral, philosophic, 
 artistic, literary, than to make an attractive play, which would 
 bring him money, should be constantly borne in mind (p. 20)." 
 
 " He wrote what he wrote merely to fill the theatre and his own 
 pockets. There was as much deliberate purpose in his breathing 
 as in his play-writiug [!] (p. 209)."
 
 46 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON. 
 
 DwiGHT Baldwin. 
 " Does this prove that Bacon wrote the plays ? No ; 
 rather that he was a greater, brighter, more daring and far- 
 seeing knave than the world has hitherto thought possible." ^ 
 — (1887). 
 
 Clement M. Ixgleby. ' 
 
 "This remarkable controversy is not without its uses. It 
 serves to call particular attention to the existence of a class 
 of minds which, like Macadam's sieves, retain only those 
 ingredients that are unsuited to the end in view. . . . 
 It has also another use. It incites us to look up our 
 evidences for Shakspere's authorship ; and we are reminded 
 how few and meagre they are." — (1887). 
 
 Prof. Frederic Karl Elze. 
 " The history of modern literature is not beyond the reach 
 of the officiousness and stupidity of dilettanteism. The 
 so-called Bacon Theory is a disease of the same species as 
 table-turning." — (1888). 
 
 Sir Theodore Martin. 
 " From the belief of three centuries the world is not to be 
 shaken by the fine-spun theories of nobodies.'''"^ — (1888). 
 
 1 We take this opportunity to give a recent and in our opinion 
 perfectly just estimate of Bacon's personal character: 
 
 "An intellect of the first rank, which from boyhood to old age 
 had been steadfast in the pursuit of truth ; which in a feeble body 
 had been sustained in vigor by all the virtues of prudence and self- 
 reverence; a genial nature, winning the affection and admiration 
 of associates; hardly paralleled in the industry with which its 
 energies were devoted to useful work ; a soul exceptional among 
 its contemporaries for piety and philanthropy — this man is rep- 
 resented to us by popular writers as having habitually sold justice 
 for money, and as having become in office the ' meanest of man- 
 kind.' 
 
 " But this picture, as so often drawn and as seemingly fixed in 
 the public mind, is not only impossible, but also demonstrably 
 false." — Charlton T. Lewis. 
 
 2 Author of ' A Century of Praise.' 
 
 3 Mr. Martin was knighted by Queen Victoria for having written 
 a life (though a very poor one) of the Prince Consort.
 
 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON 47 
 
 Leslie Stephen. 
 
 " I believe all competent critics would agree with Pro- 
 fessor Masson's opinion that the ' Shakspere-Bacon theory ' 
 is a mere craze. ... I should think it as easy to prove that 
 Mr. Gladstone wrote Lord Tennyson's poems, or to square 
 the circle."!— (1888). 
 
 Mrs. Charlotte C. Stopes. 
 
 "The authors of Shakespeare's and Bacon's works drank 
 different liquors, and therefore did not think alike. The first 
 drank nectar; the second, wine and beer."^ — (1888). 
 
 Mrs. Margaret Oliphant. 
 " The discussion about Shakspere and Bacon is a most 
 elaborate piece of folly from beginning to end, quite un- 
 worthy the consideration of any reasonable creature. No 
 such thing has ever happened in human experience." — 
 (1888). 
 
 The 'Henrv Irving Shakespeare.' 
 "The Baconian lunacy.""— (1890). 
 
 J. Proctor Knott. 
 
 The first day of December in the year of our Lord, 1890. 
 Doe ex dem. Bacon ) 
 
 V. V- Ejectment. 
 
 Shakspere ) 
 
 This cause coming on to be heard upon the demurrer to 
 the evidence, and the Court, being now sufficiently advised, 
 delivers the following opinion : 
 
 The Court has read with great interest the Brief filed for 
 
 ! We wonder whether Mr. Stephen ever read what we quote from 
 Prof. Masson on page 6, ante. It is worthy of a second perusal. 
 Prof. Massey says the same (page 15). 
 
 ^ From a periodical devoted to the liquor interests. 
 
 3 This characterization of the Baconian Theory is taken from a 
 critique on 'The Tempest,' made by the editor of the Henry Irving 
 Shakespeare, in which Prospero is said to represent James 1st. 
 The dramatist, according to this authority, " kept his eye on the 
 king" (the wisest fool in Christendom) while writing the drama. 
 And this editor is an expert on lunacy !
 
 48 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON 
 
 Plaintiff and does not hesitate to pronounce it a most ad- 
 mirable syllabus of the argument in that behalf, quite suffi- 
 cient, indeed, to raise a strong presumption, if it does not 
 fully show, that the tenant in possession is holding without 
 title. Yet in view of the familiar principle laid down in the 
 case of Doe ex dent. Titmouse V. Goiter^ Warren's Ten 
 Thousand a Year, that the Plaintiff in an ejectment must 
 recover on the strength of his own title and not upon the 
 weakness of his adversary's, the Court is not prepared to 
 show that he is entitled to judgment upon the evidence 
 adduced. Although the proof shows, almost conclusively, 
 that defendant is in without title, the case, as made, is 
 scarcely sufficient to entitle Plaintiff to recover. 
 
 The Court announces this conclusion with less reluctance 
 since it is held, in the case cited supra, that a verdict and 
 judgment in this proceeding will not bar a subsequent eject- 
 ment between the same parties for the recovery of the 
 premises here in controversy. 
 
 Demurrer sustained and judgment accordingly. 
 
 And now at this day come the parties aforesaid by their 
 respective attornies, whereupon, all and singular, the prem- 
 ises being seen and by the Court fully understood and mature 
 deliberation being thereupon had, it appears to the Court 
 that the Evidence herein is not sufficient in law to entitle 
 said Plaintiff to have and maintain his said action. Whereof 
 it is considered that the Plaintiff aforesaid take nothing by 
 reason thereof, but that he be in mercy for his false clamor, 
 and that the defendant go thereof without day. ^ — (1890). 
 
 Gen. W. T. Sherman. 
 " I am inclined to believe, with one of my friends, that it 
 was not William Shakespeare who wrote the famous plays, 
 but another man of the same name."^ — (1890). 
 
 1 Our readers may be reminded of the speech, far famed for its- 
 wit, made some years ago by Mr. Knott in the House of Represen- 
 tatives at Washington, on Duluth. 
 
 2 In letter to us.
 
 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON. 49 
 
 Bishop Phillips Brooks. 
 " If Bacon should rise from the dead and claim to be the 
 author of the Plays I would not believe him." ^ — (1891). 
 
 Robert C. Winthrop. 
 
 " I must be frank in saying that I should as soon believe 
 that Shakespeare wrote the Essays as that Bacon wrote the 
 Plays."!— (1891). 
 
 Alvey a. Adee. ! 
 
 " I find in the Plays countless internal indications that 
 they were revamped or written by a theatre-manager, and 
 this in the most characteristically Shakespearean passages, 
 like the 'blanket in the dark,' and a hundred other stage 
 allusions." 2 —(1891). 
 
 Daxiel C. Gilman. 
 " I thank you for sending me an essay which it was so 
 delightful to read, even though I label it ' extra-hazardous,' 
 arid put it out of the reach of the unsophisticated." ^ — 
 (1891). 
 
 Thomas Bailet Aldrich. 
 
 " Frankly, like every other argument I have examined, 
 sustaining the Bacon delusion, it has strengthened my con- 
 viction that Shakespeare wrote the plays and poems attributed 
 to him." ■^— (1891). 
 
 1 In letter to us. 
 
 2 Mr. Adee is Assistant Secretary of State, Washington, D. C, 
 and an exceptionally fine scholar. As to Shakespeare's stagecraft, 
 we cite two authorities on the subject for his benefit: 
 
 "The Plays of Shake-speare are less calculated for performance 
 on the stage than those of any other dramatist whatever." — Charles 
 Lamb. 
 
 "Shake-speare is not a theatrical poet; he never thought of the 
 stage; it was too narrow for his great mind." — Goethe. 
 
 ^ In letter to us. The book that had the honor of enlightening 
 Mr. Aldrich in this manner was our ' Bacon vs. Shakspere, Brief 
 for Plaintiff.'
 
 50 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON. 
 
 Samuel Blatchford. ^ 
 "The settled belief of the world in Shakspere is no more 
 to be shaken than is Niagara to run upwards." — (1891). 
 
 Thomas Hughes,^ J. 
 "This court doth order that the motion [in behalf of 
 Bacon] be refused with costs, and the further consideration 
 of this action is reserved, with liberty to all parties to 
 apply." 3 _ (1891). 
 
 W. D. Whitney.* 
 " I find it quite impossible to take seriously the thesis that 
 Shakespeare's works were written by Bacon. It seems to 
 me very much like attempting to prove that Dicken's works 
 were written by Gladstone." — (1891). 
 
 Andreav Lang. 
 " The ' Brief ' leaves me entirely convinced that the author 
 of Shakespeare's Plays and Poems was Shakespeare. I am 
 indeed surprised that you should think the author of the 
 Plays was a scholar. The reverse is patent, I think, to any 
 one acquainted with classical literature."^ — (1891). 
 
 The Post. 
 "Ignorance, credulity, love of novelty, and vanity com- 
 bined, can swallow any nonsense, and are the natural victims 
 of impudent assertion or hallucinated folly."" — (1891). 
 
 Joseph Chamberlain. 
 " I must frankly say that I consider the theory which you 
 sustain only a specimen of misplaced ingenuity, entitled per- 
 
 1 Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of the U. S., in letter to 
 us. 
 
 2 M. P., Q. C, Author, and Judge of the County Court of Cheshire. 
 •' In letter to us. 
 
 * Professor of Sanscrit and Comparative Philology in Yale 
 University. 
 
 ^ In letter to us. The personal implication In the last sentence 
 
 is quite characteristic of this writer. 
 
 * The Morning Post, London.
 
 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON 51 
 
 haps to take its place beside Walpole's Historic Doubts about 
 Richard III., and Whately's skepticism as to the existence of 
 the great Napoleon." ^ — (1891). 
 
 George J. Romanes. 
 
 " The subject is so much out of my line that my opinion 
 is of no value concerning it. But I should have supposed 
 that Bacon was a better Latin scholar than is shown by the 
 Plays, and also better acquainted with geography than to 
 have represented Bohemia as having a sea-coast." ' — ( 1891 ) . 
 
 The ' Westminster Review.' 
 " The gratuitous perversity which could erase the greatest 
 name in literature is best treated by silence." — (1891). 
 
 James Bryck. 
 
 " We must not think it incredible that two such geniuses 
 as the authors of the Novum Organum and ' Hamlet ' should 
 have lived at the same time, when we remember that Pericles, 
 Sophocles, Thucydides, and Socrates were contemporaries in 
 the same small city." ^ — (1891). 
 
 Robert G. Ingersoll. 
 
 " Francis Bacon was one of the most polished scoundrels 
 of his age." 
 
 " I believe that William Shakspere was born at Stratford, 
 that his father and mother could not read or write, and that 
 he was the greatest man of the human race." ^ — (1891). 
 
 Gen. Ellis Spear. 
 
 " I have never given much thought to the matter ; in fact, 
 I had been joined to this idol, and resented disturbances of 
 my belief. I don't know now that you miserable iconoclasts 
 are of any benefit. It is hard to transfer the affectionate 
 regard one feels for a poet to a man so mean-spirited as 
 Bacon appears to have been. The person of Shakespeare 
 
 ^ In letter to us.
 
 52 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON 
 
 has been almost as mythical as that of Homer, and the more 
 interesting on that account.''' — (1891), 
 
 Prof. Goldwin Smith. 
 " I think you will hardly convince me that the same man 
 could have written the ' Essay of Love,' and * Romeo and 
 Juliet.'" =' — (1891). 
 
 W. E. H. Lecky. 
 
 " I regret that press of otber business prevents me from 
 discussing in any detail your theory that all of Shakespeare's 
 contemporaries (including the next greatest dramatist of his 
 ace and a crowd of other dramatic writers) were mistaken 
 about the authorship of the Piays, leaving it for an American, 
 250 years after, to set them right. 
 
 "To be very frank, this theory seems to me one of the 
 very silliest of the many silly paradoxes of the time." ^ — 
 (1891). 
 
 Edward J. Phelps. 
 
 "Shakespeare is buried in the chancel of the church at 
 Stratford, and his bust is placed in the same chancel ; why is 
 this unusual distinction accorded to him? He was of no 
 family, never held any office, rendered any public service or 
 did anything for the church in England. 
 
 " There is not an instance in which any great and endur- 
 ing poetry has been produced by a person who would have 
 been otherwise known to the world." 
 
 " As to the law in Shakspere, there is not enough to 
 qualify an attorney's clerk in all his writings put together. " * 
 — (1891). 
 
 1 In letter to us from an esteemed college classmate. 
 
 2 In letter to us. We discuss this subject elsewhere, showing 
 conclusively by parallels that of the fifteen points made on Love in 
 Bacon's Essay, every one of them is found in Shakespeare. Such 
 unanimity of sentiment to the smallest detail, if not traceable to 
 the saniesource, is itself unparalleled in literature. 
 
 3 In letter to us. 
 
 * In letter to us. Mr. Phelps was Law Lecturer at Yale Uni-
 
 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON 53 
 
 Alfred Tennyson. 
 " I have just had a letter from a man who wants my 
 opinion as to whether Shakspere's plays were written by 
 Bacon. I feel inclined to write back, ' Sir, don't be a fool.' 
 The way in which Bacon speaks of love would be enough to 
 prove that he was not Shakespeare : ' I know not how, but 
 martial men are given to love ; I think it is but as they are 
 given to wine ; for perils commonly ask to be paid in 
 pleasures.' How could a man with such an idea of love write 
 ' Romeo and Juliet ' ? " ^ — ( 1 892 ). 
 
 George Saintsbury. 
 
 "The Montaigne-Bacon craze is even more demonstrably 
 preposterous than the Shacouian." — (1892). 
 
 versity, U. S. Minister to the Court of St. James, etc. As above 
 quoted, he touches upon three points: 
 
 1. As to Shakspere's burial. Shakspere was buried in the 
 chancel of the church because the law gave that privilege to all 
 owners of tithes; Shakspere was such owner. 
 
 2. As to poets in general. We wonder if Mr. Phelps had ever 
 heard of Milton, or Voltaire, or Goethe, or Poe? 
 
 3. As to law in the plays. Chief Justice Campbell of England, 
 writing before this controversy began, said that " to Shakespeare's 
 law, lavishly as he propounds it, there can be neither demurrer, 
 nor bill of exception, nor writ of error," and that no one, without 
 deep exceptional knowledge of legal principles, can even now 
 understand all of it. Able lawyers, like Mr. Furnivall, Mr. T. S. 
 E. Dixon, Dr. Appleton Morgan and many others, on both sides of 
 the authorship question, fully accept Justice Campbell's statement 
 as true ; how. then, could the plays have been written by a man 
 who, it is admitted on all sides, had never studied law, whose 
 father and mother could not read or write, whose daughters were 
 also grossly illiterate, and who himself never wrote a letter, never 
 received one, or, so far as we know or can ascertain, formed with 
 his pen more than thirteen letters of the alphabet? 
 
 ^ Here is the identical sentiment in Shakespeare: 
 
 " We are soldiers, 
 And may that soldier a mere recreant prove 
 That means not, hath not, or is not in love." 
 
 Troilus and Cressida^ I. j. 
 Sir Henry Irving tells the following story : A guest of Mr. 
 Tennyson once broached to him the subject of the authorship of 
 Shakespeare, and mentioned some arguments in its favor. Mr. 
 Tennyson arose and abruptly left the room, saying, " I can't listen 
 to you, — you, who would pluck the laurels from the brow of the 
 dead Christ." Sir Henry sees no impropriety in this shocking 
 speech. We are reminded of the reply so frequently made in the 
 United States fifty years ago to any one urging the abolition of 
 slavery: " What! do you want your daughter to marry a nigger? "
 
 54 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON 
 
 Henry George. 
 "Nothing but perversity can attribute the Plays to Bacon. 
 If there is any phrase that will soundingly declare the allega- 
 tion prepostei-ously false, and the 'allegators' wanton and 
 pestilent disturbers, record it as my verdict in the case." ' — 
 (1893). 
 
 Edmund C. Stedman. 
 
 "The instinct of a scholar is against the Baconian 
 theory."2_(1893). 
 
 William Winter. 
 
 "Effrontery was to be expected from the advocates of 
 the preposterous Bacon Theory."^ — (1893). 
 
 Marquess of Lorne. 
 "Bacon may have left a mark, here and there, and the 
 allusions to < hang hog ' and to St. Albans may speak of him ; 
 but some threads do not make a garment, and the garment 
 all know [!] to be of Shakspere's weaving."* — (1893). 
 
 ^ In the Arena Magazine, Boston, Mass. 
 
 2 That is, the instinct of a scholar is in favor of one who, it is 
 claimed by his advocates, was no scholar. 
 
 3 Effrontery ? How can a charge of effrontery or impudence lie 
 against us in this discussion ? Obviously, on the ground only that 
 our friends, the Shakspereans, are professional scholars and, 
 therefore, have an exclusive right to the subject. But have they 
 such an exclusive right? We quote from two of their own 
 number: 
 
 " If we wish to know the force of human genius, we should read 
 Shakespeare; if we wish to see the insignificance of human learn- 
 ing, we may study his commentators."— ^F«V/iaw HazUtt. 
 
 " In all literature there is perhaps nothing more dull, dismal, 
 unprofitable, taken as a whole, tlian Shakespearean criticism! 
 Here and there, no doubt, we come upon a writer of superior dis- 
 cernment, such, for instance, as Coleridge, who, if he adds little to 
 the illumination of Shakespeare, at least starts fancies of his own; 
 but, for the most part, criticism on this subject is a depressing ex- 
 hibition of fussy self-conceit and commonplace twaddle." — Satur. 
 day Review^ June 17, 1876. 
 
 * From his verdict as a juror in the Arena Magazine, Boston, 
 Mass.
 
 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON. 55 
 
 Alfred Russel Wallace. 
 
 "Never, surely, was there so utterly baseless a claim as 
 that made by the advocates of Bacon against Shakspere."^ 
 
 — (1893). 
 
 A London Journal. 
 
 " How any human being of ordinary intellect can read 
 that address (Heminge and Condell's), and Ben Jonson's 
 poem prefixed to this edition, and then believe that Shak- 
 spere was not the author of these plays is beyond compre- 
 hension. Examined in the light of these simple testimonies, 
 the Baconian theory is one of the wildest as well as one of 
 the most absurd delusions ever suggested." ^ 
 
 George L. Kittredge.^ 
 "I advise you not to read Baconian books." ^ — (1895). 
 
 HOLCOMBE InGLEBY. 
 
 " Unhappily, nothing will ever check the strangest and 
 most grotesque theories from being entertained, so long as 
 there are men who cannot appreciate the value of evidence." 
 
 — (1897). 
 
 D. H. Madden. 
 «' Bacon has been at pains to prove his incapacity of the 
 higher flights of poetry by printing in the year 1625 a 
 
 ^ From his verdict as a juror ia the Arena Magazine, Boston, 
 Mass. 
 
 '^ The above statement was made on the occasion of the dedica 
 tion of a mouument to Heminge and Condell in the London church- 
 yard where they lie buried. The inscrijition on the monument 
 tells us that to them as editors of the Folio, " the world owes all it 
 calls Shakespeare." 
 
 3 Professor of English in Harvard University, instructing a class 
 of young ladies in Radcliffe College. With more power in the 
 Professor's hands it would have been but a step beyond this to do 
 as the English government did with Tyndale's edition of the Eng- 
 lish Bible in 1527 ; it forbade any one to read it, and made a bonfire 
 of all copies found in circulation. Bacon said of College students 
 in his time, that they were taught to believe, not to investigate. 
 That seems to be Prof. Kittredge's view of collegiate instruction 
 today.
 
 56 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON. 
 
 ' Translation of Certain Psalms into English Verse,' in which 
 he has transmuted fine oriental imagery into poor rhyming 
 
 prose."' » — (1897). 
 
 JOH>f FiSKK. 
 
 *' I have a wheelbarrow-load of rubbish written to prove 
 that such plays as * King Lear' and 'The Merry Wives of 
 Windsor ' emanated from one of the least poetical and least 
 humorous minds of modern times. . . . Not one of the 
 writers can by any permissible laxity of speech be termed a 
 scholar."-'— (1897). 
 
 1 Prof. Madden, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Dublin, 
 proves his own incapacity of making a fair statement by omitting to 
 say that Milton did precisely the same thing, and even into 
 ''rhyming prose " poorer than Bacon's. A critic that will do this 
 may be expected, when prejudices are at stake, to strip Milton also 
 of his laurels. Another bit of wisdom enlightening us from 
 Madden is, that we must not " look for i^oetry of the highest order 
 at the hands of a great philosopher, statesman and lawyer." Will 
 this wonderful Vice-Chancellor please inform us to what difference 
 in intellectuality Miltou and Goethe owed their poetical gifts as 
 distinguished from. Bacon? Mr. Spedding indulged in no such 
 nonsense. He said: "Had Bacon's genius taken the ordinary 
 direction, I little doubt that it would have carried him to a place 
 among the great poets." 
 
 - Dr. Fiske claims to have derived these judgments of Bacon 
 (least poetical and least humorous) from a "forty years' acquaint- 
 ance with Bacon's works." That he was incorrect in them, as he 
 was generally in his views of American history where opposing 
 opinions were to be weighed, can easily be shown : ° 
 
 1 As to poetry : 
 
 "The poetical faculty was powerful in Bacon's mind." — 
 Macaulay, 
 
 " Bacon was a poet." — Percy Bisske Shelley. 
 
 " One of the finest of this poetic progeny." — Taine. 
 
 " Poetry pervades the thoughts, it inspires the similes, it hymns 
 in the majestic sentences of the wisest of mankind." — E. Bulvner 
 Lytton. 
 
 "Bacon had all the natural faculties which a poet wants, — a fine 
 ear for metre, a fine feeling for imaginative effect in words, and a 
 vein of poetic passion. Had his genius taken the ordinary direc- 
 tion, I have little doubt that it would have carried him to a place 
 among the great poets." — James Spedding. 
 
 Mr. Spedding also gave forty years to study of Bacon. 
 
 2 As to humor: 
 
 " Bacon hath great wit and much learning." — Queen Elizabeth. 
 
 " His language, where he could spare or pass by a jest, was nobly 
 censorious." — Ben Jonson. 
 
 " One of the i^etty blemishes which, though lost in the splendor
 
 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON. 57 
 
 Geobgk Bkandes. 
 
 "In recent days a troop of less than half-educated people 
 have put forth the doctrine that Shakspere did not write the 
 plays and poems attributed to him. Here it has fallen into 
 the hands of raw Americans and fanatical women." ^ — 
 (1898). 
 
 'QUARTKKLT ReVIEW.' 
 
 " There is no difficulty in supposing that a clever man, 
 living among wits, could pick up French and Italian suffi- 
 cient for his uses. But extremely stupid people are naturally 
 amazed by even such commonplace acquirements. . . . Shak- 
 spere, ex hypothesis was a rude, unlettered fellow. Such a 
 man, the Baconians assume, would naturally be chosen by 
 Bacon as his mask, and put forward as the author of Bacon's 
 pieces. Bacon would select an ignoramus as a plausible 
 author of plays, which, by the theory, are rich in knowledge 
 of the classics, and nobody would be surprised. . . . Ignor- 
 ance can go no further than in these arguments. Such are 
 the logic and learning of American amateurs, who do not 
 even know the names of the books they talk about, or the 
 languages in which they are written. Such learning and 
 such logic are passed off by ' the less than half educated,' on 
 the absolutely untaught, who decline to listen to scholars."^ 
 — (1898). 
 
 of Lord Bacon's excellences, it is not unfair to mention, is this: he 
 is sometimes too metaphorical and too witty." — Hetiry Hallam. 
 
 " Id wit ... he never had an equal." — Macaulay. 
 
 It would be much nearer the truth than is Fiske's partisan 
 statement to say that Bacon's mind was one of the most poetic and 
 most humorous of modern times. 
 
 As to scholarship, there was then living, within 1000 feet of 
 Fiske's home, one of the finest scholars of America, author of a 
 very learned work advocating the Baconian theory, and of another 
 entitled ' Realistic Idealism in Philosophy Itself;' formerly Justice 
 of the Supreme Judicial Court of Missouri, Law Professor of 
 Harvard University, etc, etc. He had no superior, hardly an equal, 
 in Cambridge. 
 
 'From his 'William Shakespeare,' I. 104. 
 
 'July, 1898, p. 36.
 
 58 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON. 
 
 ' Ma:n(;hkster Guardian.' 
 -' The author describes it as a 'Brief for the Plaintiff,' and 
 argues with admirable gravity in favor of the topsy-turvy 
 theory that Shakespeare is not Shakspere, but Bacon." — 
 (1898). 
 
 Helen Keller. ^ 
 
 "Your book is very interesting. Some of the arguments 
 are startling, and all of them ingenious ; but they have not 
 made a Baconian of me. You know, I told you that I felt 
 quite safe in my fortress; for I knew that your battering-ram 
 of facts would be powerless against love's armaments. 
 
 "I have just finished 'Macbeth,' and am now reading 
 Bacon's Essays. Try as hard as I may, I cannot discover 
 any great resemblance between Bacon and Shakespeare. 
 Bacon's style is calm, beautiful, intellectual, but cold. Occa- 
 sionally, one is dazzled by the splendor of a great thought ; 
 but he never touches a chord which sets the human heart to 
 vibrating. On the other hand, Shakespeare's plays are 
 crammed full of deep, tender, passionate human feeling. 
 He studied the hearts of his fellow-men more than their 
 intellects, and that is why our love for him is so real and 
 personal. To paraphrase his own words, we cannot read his 
 lines and remember not the hand that wrote them. We are 
 as sure of the nobility and beauty of his character as of his 
 incomparable genius; we admire his art and love the 
 master." — (1899). 
 
 W. Carew Hazlitt. 
 " That Bacon, situated as he was in constant and anxious 
 expectation of loyal advancement, did not venture to asso- 
 ciate himself publicly with such performances, had they even 
 been capable of utilization as he left them, is perfectly 
 
 obvious It has always struck us as extraordinary, 
 
 and almost as a problem to be explained, hoAV the two great- 
 
 *One of the most wonderful personalities the world has ever 
 knowu.
 
 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON 59 
 
 est Englishmen belonged to one era, neaily in the same 
 interval of years, how they lived, as it were, side hy side, 
 face to face, yet, so far as we can learn, strangers to each 
 other ; one, a poetical philosopher ; the other, a philosophical 
 poet ; and at length, according to some, the mystery is un- 
 ravelled, the veil is rent asunder, and not Stratford, but 
 Gorhambury, is entitled to the glory of being the first village 
 in the world. A Cathedral city without a bishop, a shrine 
 with relics canonized by no church, only by the voice of all 
 educated mankind."^— (1899). 
 
 Anonymous. 
 
 *' [Mr. Reed's * Bacon vs. Shakspere' ] is one of the most 
 dishonest pieces of criticism I have ever met with. It is un- 
 fair to the extent of falsehood. I could write quires if I 
 were to point out all the shallow arguments, forced miscon- 
 structions, baseless assumptions, and direct errors with which 
 the volume bristles from beginning to end." ^ — (1899). 
 
 Paek Godwin. 
 
 "It was reserved for the long-eared quidnuncs of the 
 present century, who invented the Baconian nonsense, to 
 raise the thinnest mist of a doubt."' ^ — (1900). 
 
 ^This is said in irony, however out of place such irony may be, 
 concerning the relations between a ''poetical philosopher" and a 
 " philosophical poet" under the circumstances. It reminds us of 
 the ease with which the world was deluded for many years in the 
 matter of the authorship of the Waverley Novels. The books, now 
 being written in behalf of Bacon as the author of Shake-speare, are 
 in some respects mere transcripts, mutatis mutandis^ of those which 
 once sought to prove, against Scott's positive denials, mauy times 
 repeated, and even against rival claimants (one of them a clergy- 
 man), that Scott himself was the author. Many a mind is like the 
 eye of an owl, the more light you throw upon it the more it 
 contracts. 
 
 ^Said in a Boston (Mass.) journal to have been written by an 
 "excellent English Shaksperean scholar and author." 
 
 ^This occurs in a recent book by Mr. Godwin on Shake-speare's 
 Sonnets. Tlie Sonnets, as our readers will remember, were 
 addressed by their author " lo Mr. W. H.;" that is, as Godwin 
 interprets the initials, to Mr. William Hiimelf. Ex pede Herculem. 
 Godwin's book is beyond doubt the most iuane and foolish ever 
 written on the subject.
 
 6o OPINIONS, PRO AND CON. 
 
 Sidney Lkk. ' 
 " Why should the Baconian theorists have any following 
 outside lunatic asylums? . . . Those who adopt the Baconian 
 theory in any of its phases should be classed with the be- 
 lievers in the Cocklane ghost or in Arthur Orton's identity 
 with Roger Tichborne. Ignorance, vanity, inability to test 
 evidence, lack of scholarly habits of mind, are in each of these 
 instances found to be the main causes predisposing half-edu- 
 cated members of the public to the acceptance of the delusion* 
 and when any of the genuinely deluded victims have been 
 narrowly examined, they have invariably exhibited a tendency 
 to monomania. . . . The whole farrago of printed verbiage 
 which fosters the Baconian bacillus is unworthy of serious 
 attention from any but professed students of intellectual ab- 
 erration." — (1901). 
 
 H. H. ASQDITH. 
 
 *' The task which confronts the writer of a life like 
 Shakspere's is not to transcribe and vivify a record : it is 
 rather to solve a problem by the methods of hypothesis and 
 inference. His work is bound to be, not so much an essay 
 in biography, as in the more or less scientific use of the 
 biographic imagination. The difficulty is, of course, infinitely 
 enhanced in this particular case by the impersonal quality of 
 most of Shakspere's writings — a quality which I myself am 
 heretic enough to believe extends to by far the greater part 
 of the Sonnets. We do not know that the greatest teacher 
 of antiquity wrote a single line. Shakspere, who died less 
 than three hundred years ago, must have written well over a 
 hundred thousand. And yet, thanks to Plato and Xenophon, 
 we have a far more definite and vivid acquaintance with the 
 
 ^ We advise any one who may wish to take a correct measure of 
 Mr. Lee, as biographer of Shakspere, to read Mr. George Stronach's 
 pamphlet entitled 'Mr. Sidney Lee and the Baconians,' published 
 by Messrs. Gay and Bird, 22 Bedford St., London. Price, 1 d. Or 
 a copy may be obtained with our compliments on application to us, 
 at Andover, Mass., U. S. A. It is a capital piece of work, even in 
 the Latin sense of that word.
 
 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON. 6i 
 
 man Socrates than we shall ever have with the man Shak- 
 spere."^— (1901). 
 
 Charles L. Dana. 
 " The Baconians have obsessions [mental states caused by 
 evil spirits] or ideas fixed and disproportionately dominant 
 in their minds, leading them to weak logic, stupendous mis- 
 representations, and often to erratic conduct. . . Such 
 people have received the scientific name of mattoids. ^ 
 The mattoid flourishes in America because we have so lame 
 a proportion of half educated minds, and no central author- 
 ity, or respect for such as we have." [!] — (1901). 
 
 Sir Henry Irving. 
 
 « The case against Shakespeare seems to rest on nothing 
 better than the assumption that, because Bacon was a 
 learned man and Shakespeare wrote a very poor hand, there- 
 fore Bacon must be the real author of the Plavs." ^ 
 
 " I fear that the desire to take Shakespeare from his right- 
 ful position is due to that antipathy to the actor's calling 
 which has its eccentric manifestations to this day."* — 
 (1902). 
 
 "The writer's definition of biography is, of course, to be con- 
 demned. We can conceive of nothing more inimical to the cause 
 of truth than this would be, if generally adopted. Mr. Asquilh 
 does not disgrace himself, however, by expressing a hope that we 
 may never know more than we now do of the greatest author of all 
 time. A British statesman, though he may be wrong in his phil- 
 osophy, has always some respect for the law.s of heredity. 
 
 ^A medical term, signifying drunken or stupid monomaniacs. 
 
 ^In letter to us. 
 
 *From Sir Heni-y's Princeton address. That is to say, a search 
 for the highest possible authorship of plays marks a geneial de- 
 preciation of the histrionic art! 
 
 But here is another gem of logic, equally brilliant, from the same 
 address: ''As for the Baconians, they assiduously forget that 
 Shakspere [of Stratford] was the greatest of poets." Our readers 
 will hardly be surprised to learn that on the morning after the 
 delivery of this extraordinary address a leading newspaper of the 
 " intellectual city" of New York proclaimed that the question of 
 authorship was then finally and forever settled.
 
 62 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON 
 
 The Literary World (London). 
 " These two books on the next shelf are by Mr. Edwin 
 Reed. We noticed at some length a book by this writer 
 more than three years ago, and we showed that it was a mass 
 of ignorance and folly and misrepresentation. For all that, 
 it is still in circulation ; for no pabulum is too gross for the 
 people who use this library ; and the more they swallow, the 
 more they want. . . Mr. Reed audaciously transfers 
 the works of the great dramatist bodily to Bacon, his Bacon ; 
 insomuch that when he affects to compare Bacon's poetry 
 with Milton's he takes a long passage from ' Hamlet ' to rep- 
 resent the former. With regard to their value as evidence, 
 therefore, the piles of stuff he puts before us, their founda- 
 tions being i-otten, become a mere heap of rubbish 
 
 We will here say no more than that what the publishers call 
 ' Baconian Literature ' is not mei-ely and negatively a lot of 
 
 bibiia a biblia^ but a positive disgrace to literature 
 
 Questions affecting mind and morals come to the front; the 
 power of discriminating between truth and error has ceased 
 to exist." ^— (1902). 
 
 'The passage from ' Hamlet' was introduced to show, under the 
 Kule of Three as it were, that in matter of style no more difference 
 exists between Bacon's prose and Hamlet than there is between 
 the prose and poetry uf Milton. We regret that the able critic of 
 the 'World' did not perceive the nature of the argument. His 
 office, however, is a useful one, for the car of human progress 
 requires many brakemen to one stoker. 
 
 Concerning the same book, we quote the following from Mr. 
 Edmund Gosse: "The Baconian hypothesis can never be stated 
 with more courtesy and candor, with keener ingenuity, or with 
 fuller investigation than has in this instance been done." 
 
 Also, from Mr. Edmund C. Stedman: "Even a staunch Shake- 
 sperean ought to read your 'Brief without feeling his animosity 
 aroused." 
 
 We add on our own account that no one can write an author up 
 or down but himself. A book always gravitates to its rightful 
 place at last, under laws as immutable as those of physical nature. 
 Freudenberger's pamphlet was ordered by the authorities of Uri to 
 be burned in the public square by the common hangman, and 
 Freudenberger himself was obliged to ilee for his life; but now, 
 one hundred and forty years after, it has conquered the world. 
 And the ' William Tell ' myth was supported, precisely as the 
 Shaksperean one has been, by forgeries, deceptions of all kinds, 
 and personal rancor from beginning to end.
 
 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON 63 
 
 'The Times' (London). 
 "It is just as difficult to understand how Burns produced 
 his lyrics as how Shakespeare produced his plaj^s, with this 
 difference — that we know all the opportunities that Burns 
 had, while we know so little of Shakespeare that he may 
 have done much study and had many experiences of which 
 there is no record. What we do know of him, however, is 
 that he was a living man, mixing in the intellectual life of 
 London, and impressing his contemporaries with his wit and 
 information. To get over contemporary opinion we must 
 suppose that Bacon not only wrote the plays, but personated 
 Shakespeare in every-day life." ^ — (1902). 
 
 The ' Illusteated London News.' 
 " The gravity of these Baconians is as wonderful as their 
 research. Hostess Quickly, describing the death of Falstaff 
 in ' Hen. V,' tells us that his feet were as cold as any stone. 
 You may think this coldness, as a sign of approaching dis- 
 solution, might have been discovered by Shakespeare, or by 
 any other moderately careful observer. That is too common- 
 place an explanation for the solemn erudition of Mr. Reed. 
 He cites Bacon on the * coldness of the extremities,' and Hip- 
 pocrates on the ' extremities cold,' and suggests that this phe- 
 nomenon could have been known only to a profound 
 student of the ancient Greek. . . A few grains of com- 
 mon sense, to say nothing of imagination, might save Mr. 
 Reed and his like from volumes of folly." - 
 
 ' There is an American gentleman, named Edwin Reed, 
 who goes on producing volumes of Baconian wisdom for the 
 
 ^The difference between Burns' productions and those of Shake- 
 speare in their bearing on the question of authorship does not seem 
 to have occurred to this editorial writer. 
 
 ^This is a case of supptessio veri with undoubted intent to 
 deceive. The presages of death, given by Hostess Quickly, were 
 seven in number, all of which, including the one cited by the News, 
 are found in Hippocrates, and all but one in Bacon. The fact that 
 they were copied from Hippocrates is shown, not only by the num- 
 ber of them under the law of accumulation, but also by the word 
 green which Hippocrates uses in his description of the face of a dying
 
 64 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON 
 
 confusion of Shakspere. He is candid as well as industrious, 
 and when be makes an assei'tion in the text does not mind 
 refuting it in a foot-note. For instance, a passage in the 
 second edition of Hamlet, about the influence of the moon on 
 the tides, was left out of the first Folio of 1623. Why? 
 Because ' Bacon had changed his opinion on the subject.' 
 But Mr. Reed admits that the opinion remains in four other 
 plays printed in the first Folio. Here is the rock on which 
 the Baconian theory splits.' ^ — (1902). 
 
 A London Periodical. 
 
 " Baconocrankism stands out as a sordid superstition, as 
 baseless in aspect of fact as it is slanderous toward the 
 dead."— (1902). 
 
 The foregoing is a criticism aimed at Mr. George Stronach, of 
 the Advocates' Library of Edinburgh. Mr. Stronach replied to it 
 as follows : 
 
 *' I grant I may have slandered the ' man of Stratford ' by stating 
 that he did not vrrite, and could not have written the plays at- 
 tributed to him. But what is this when compared with the 
 slanders in the standard life of Shakspere by Sidney Lee ? Accord- 
 ing to this authority, — 
 
 1, William Shakspere seduced and was forced to marry Anne 
 
 man in Greece, where the people are olive-complexioned. Shake- 
 speare uses it in the same manner: "His nose was as sharp as a 
 pen on a table of green field." This reference to the color of the 
 background is certainly Hippocratic, for it cannot apply to an 
 Englishman. Nor would it have occurred to an Englishman who 
 was not very erudite, or who had not traveled in Southern Europe. 
 The important point, which The News omits to mention, is that 
 now for the first time (after Dr. Creighton), and by collation with 
 the original Greek, Hostess Quickly's famous speech is correctly 
 given. Theobald's "babbling " (1733) nonsense, a known interpola- 
 tion made more than one hundred years after the play was printed, 
 has been followed long enough. 
 
 1 Bacon changed his opinion regarding the cause of the daily 
 tides, rejecting the almost universal theory of mankind that they 
 are due to the influence of the moon, in 1616. The tragedy of 
 Hamlet was revised by the author after that date and the old 
 theory left out. The other plays mentioned were not so revised, 
 and in them the old theory was naturally retained. This was fully 
 explained in the said foot-note.
 
 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON 65 
 
 Hathaway, who had a child by him five months after their mar- 
 riage. — Lee, p. 22. 
 
 2. He had to leave Stratford for poaching. — Lee, 27. 
 
 3. He cheated his fellow-townsmen iu the matter of the enclosure 
 of public lands. — Lee, 270. 
 
 4. He endeavored to obtain by means of false statements a coat- 
 of-arms. — Lee, 188. 
 
 5. He barred his wife's dower, and cut her off, not with the usual 
 shilling, but with his ' second-best bed.' — Lee, 27i. 
 
 6. He neglected his daughter Judith's education, so that at the 
 age of 27 she signed her name with a mark. — Lee, 226. 
 
 7. He anticipated Burbage in a disgraceful assignation made 
 with a woman at a theatre. — I-ee, 265. 
 
 8. He died of a drunken debauch. — Lee, 271-2." 
 
 Tbe ' East Ai^glian Times.' 
 " To the majority of thinking men these dramas have been, 
 and are, the most miraculous achievement of a human intel- 
 lect. Tennyson has left on record his ignorance of any 
 mental process by which they could have be(!n written. 
 Emerson has said, ' A good reader can, in a sort, nestle into 
 Plato's brain, and think from thence ; but not into Shake- 
 speare's.' But in the fulness of time Mr. Edwin Reed has 
 plucked the heart out of the mystery ; he can play on the 
 recorder. It is a tune of his own composition, and sensitive 
 people stop their ears ; but he plays merrily on. And why 
 should he not ? Did not Francis Bacon, by the mouth of 
 Hamlet, say that it is as easy as lying ?" — (1902). 
 
 ' The Daily People.' 
 " * Francis Bacon, our Shake-speare ' is an effort that is 
 equally futile as the other [on Parallelisms]. Both books 
 together are enough to damn any cause. The pity of putting 
 good paper and good type in these two volumes, when the 
 ' Man in the Purple Pants,' ' Locked in the Safe, or a Brave 
 Boy's Daring Deed,' ' A Rise in the World, or Stepping on 
 a Barrel Hoop,' ' Naughty Nettie's Nineteen Lovers,' and 
 other choice bits of literature are forced to come before the 
 world in cheap five-and-ten-cent editions! The crime that 
 Bome books are ! " — (1902).
 
 ee OPINIONS, PRO AND CON 
 
 Edward L. Temple. ^ 
 « One ambitious and blatant quidnunc would have the 
 brain of another, great indeed in his own domain, rob Shak- 
 spere of his unrivalled glory, by means of a microscopical 
 analysis, far-fetched and fanciful ; an analysis which would 
 sustain Mother Goose's authorship of the Lord's Prayer as 
 thoroughly as it does the Baconian parentage of these 
 dramas."— ri 892). 
 
 Franklin H. Head. 
 "Shakespeare, in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream,' says, 
 
 * Let no dog bark.' Bacon says, in his Essay of Gardens, 
 
 * The bark of this tree,' etc., etc. This parallelism, that occurs 
 to us, seems to have escaped Mr. Reed's vision. He is wel- 
 come to its use in case another edition of his book is ever 
 called for ; . . what the Baconians call evidence is surely 
 
 the weakest scheme ever devised by human dullness." - 
 
 (1902). 
 
 ^President of the Shakespeare Society, Rutland, Vt., U. S. A. 
 
 ''We take this opportunity to say that the argument from paral- 
 lelisms is (historical evidences being in the nature of the case as 
 far as possible excluded by the author) the strongest that can' be 
 presented on behalf of a common authorship. We mean, of course 
 parallelisms, not in imagery and diction alone, but also in the 
 whole intent and scope of the respective works. Bacon souo-ht 
 the restoration of mankind to the state of happiness in which°(as 
 he believed) it had lived in the Garden of Eden before the Fall, 
 and to this end brought the whole weight of his philosophy to 
 bear on man's intellect and moral nature. Accordingly he wrote 
 in prose sixty-one essays and in verse thirty-seven dramas, on 
 traits of human character, their beginnings, processes and ends, 
 not for amusement, but for instruction. The first essay was pub- 
 lished in 1597; the first drama also in 1.597. The last essay was 
 published in 1625; the last drama in 1623 In time, in character 
 and in purpose the prose and the poetry are the same, except that 
 in the one the principles of conduct for man's guidance are laid 
 down theoretically; they are worked out, illustrated and enforced, 
 brought home to men's bosoms, in the field of action in the other! 
 For example, take the drama of Julius Caesar; its subject is envy. 
 Bacon wrote also an essay on envy. The two productions touch 
 each other at every turn ; in at least one hundred and forty places, 
 by actual count, as our forthcoming edition of the play will show! 
 Herein is the real legitimate sphere of the argument from parallel- 
 isms which our friend, Mr. Head, ridicules. He ridicules it, be- 
 cause, like the world in general, he has no conception of the
 
 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON. 67 
 
 *The Nation' (N. Y.) 
 "Further argument is really out of place in the presence 
 of such a misrepresentation of known facts as Mr. Reed's 
 chapter contains. We have no doubt that the misrepresen- 
 tation is unintentional. It exhibits, nevertheless, the char- 
 acter of Mr. Reed's Baconian scholarship, and the equip- 
 ment with which he operates in his attempt to elucidate the 
 meaning of the great philosopher." ^ — (1902). 
 
 meaning of the Shakespeare plays, nor can he have until he learna 
 who wrote them. But this is a knowledge reserved for the next 
 generation. Fortunately for the progress of humanity old men die, 
 for they never change. 
 
 As to the imputation of dullness, that is of no consequence. It 
 certainly cannot be justly applied to Mr. Head, he being one of the 
 brightest men we ever met. 
 
 *o* 
 
 ^This is taken from a very elaborate and, generally speaking, an 
 ingenuous critique contained in a recent number of The Nation (N.Y.) 
 The particular question at issue was whether the Shake-speare 
 plays constitute the fourth part of Bacon's philosophical system, 
 in accordance with certain intimations found by us to that effect in 
 Bacon's prose works. 
 
 The writer makes no allowance for the secret in the case. He 
 admits that Bacon approves of acroamatic or enigmatical methods 
 of expounding truth, as the ancients did, but regards this fact as 
 unworthy of consideration here, because Bacon does not plainly 
 assertthat he himself would adopt them. This is a fair specimen 
 of the author's reasoning powers. 
 
 Bacon called his system Instauratio Magna, The Great Restora- 
 tion, because by means of it he expected, as we have already said, 
 to restore mankind to its original state of bliss. For this purpose 
 the system was divided into a certain number of parts, devoted 
 successively and in the following order to a consideration of the 
 intellectual, physical and moral faculties of man. One part, there- 
 fore, and, considering the end in view, the crowning one, was to 
 consist of instruction in morals, but where is that part? It was to 
 develop, illustrate and apply right principles of conduct, such as 
 we need for our guidance (quoting Bacon) in "logic, ethics and 
 politics;" of traits of character, such as (again quoting Bacon) 
 "anger, fear, shame and the like;" but where is this great part, 
 the first of its kind in literature, to be found? In Bacon's acknowl- 
 edged works? Not a line of it! In works unacknowledged by Bacon, 
 but produced in his time, suitable fur his purpose, and, in form at 
 least (under the prejudices of the age) demanding a pseudonym ? 
 What did Bacon mean when, iu prescribing the qualifications of 
 any future interpreter of nature, who would follow in his footsteps 
 and carry on the work as he himself had done, he said, " My son, 
 thou must wear a tnaskf" And what did he mean, too, when ho said 
 that the art of inventing grows by invention itself, and that his own
 
 68 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON. 
 
 'The Churchman.' 
 " New-fangled folly on one side, and scholarship and 
 unbroken tradition on the other." — (1903). 
 
 The 'Academy and Literature' (London). 
 " The whole of the pullulating mess of mushroom literature 
 which has sprung up around the [Bacon-Shakspere] ques- 
 tion in recent years is the production of writers who, even 
 where they are not actually dishonest, are at least incapable 
 of dealing with any literary problem in accordance with the 
 canons of sound reasoning." — (1908). 
 
 'The Saturday Review' (London). 
 
 "Here is a notable contribution for the library of the 
 Bacon-Shakspere lunatic asylum."* — (1903). 
 
 efforts under that head were the first of the kind ever attempted? 
 Perhaps Coleridge caught a glimpse of the truth when he declared 
 that the Shake-speare dramas are neither tragedies, nor comedies, 
 nor both in one, but a different ^e/ius, diverse in kind, not merely 
 degree." 
 
 The Nation is also on record as having taken the same general 
 position as early as 1866, when Judge Holmes' book first appeared, 
 as follows: " The notion has not even the merit of ingenuity, since 
 it cannot be maintained but by violating all the laws which have 
 hitherto obtained in regard to the value of contemporary testimony. 
 .... We believe that the Baconian theory has not a leg to stand 
 upon." 
 
 The " contemporary testimony " applies only to the works of an 
 author known by his pbeudonym, Shake-speare, and hag no more 
 probative force on the question of real authorship than similar 
 references to George Eliot's Adam Bede would go to prove that 
 that book was written by Mary Ann Evans. 
 
 '■This has reference to the New English Dictionary in which 
 Dr. Murray, editor in chief, had recently stated that " while 
 Shakespeare used verbs with the prefix oui fifty-four times, for 
 thirty-eight of which he is our first, and for nine of them our only 
 authority, we, [Dr. Murray and his associates] cite Bacon for only 
 two." These remarks have led to a very serious arraignment of 
 the dictionary itself. On an expert examination of it by Mr. G. 
 Stronach of the Advocates' Library of Edinburgh, a perfectly com- 
 petent and trustworthy critic, it is found that instead of Bacon's 
 "eschewing" that form of verb, as alleged, (lie used it often) 
 Murray as a rule eschews Bacon. That is to say, Murray fails to 
 draw words for his purpose from a large part of Bacon's writings. 
 The " Letters," for instance, comprised in seven volumes published 
 by Spedding and covering Bacon's whole career, from 1580 to 1626,
 
 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON. 69 
 
 J. Churtox Collins. 
 
 "There is nothing to detain us .... in Mr. Edwin Reed's 
 ' Bacon versus Shakspere,' a masterpiece of nonsense which 
 has gone through at least seven editions." 
 
 " And so this epidemic spreads, till it has now assumed 
 the proportions, and many of the characteristics, of the 
 dancing mania of the Middle Ages." ' — (1904). 
 
 is not once referred to in the dictionary, tliough filled with words, 
 as might have been expected of Bacon, that oupfht to have been 
 cited there. And this, in a dictionary that pretends to ^ive the 
 history of words from the time when they were first introduced 
 into the vernacular until the present. Mr. Stronach shows that not 
 only new words of the verbal form in question, but also many 
 others, in various parts of speech, runnings we have no doubt into 
 hundreds, but unnoticed in the dictionary, were used by Bacon 
 before they happened to find their way into the Plays. In this 
 state of things what becomes of the dictionary ? Must everything 
 in the world be vitiated by one giant blunder in scholarship? We 
 regret, however, that we cannot quarrel with the (Saturday Review 
 for saying that this prodigious work in philology is a fit contribu- 
 tion to the libraries of lunatic asylums. 
 
 ^ The position taken by Mr. Churton in this controversy has, 
 until quite recently, been to us incomprehensible. He has shown 
 beyond all question (as others, indeed, have done before him) that 
 the author of the Plays was familiar with the Latin and the Greek 
 literatures ; and that he derived his knowledge of the former from 
 its originals. Mr. Churton, however, goes farther, and, in order to 
 accommodate the authorship of the Plays to a comparatively 
 ignorant yokel, asserts that the dramatist must have acquired his 
 knowledge of Greek literature wholly from Latin translations. W© 
 have never doubted that knowledge of the Greek language cannot 
 be safely assumed from one's familiarity with a single work or two 
 in Greek ; we took this ground, in opposition to Mr. Steevens, in 
 our Fkancis Bacon, Our Shake-speaue (p. 208 n.), published 
 long before Mr. Churton's articles on the subject appeared; but to 
 apply this theory to the great body of Greek literature, as Mr. 
 Churton now does, is manifestly absurd. The explanation, which 
 we have sought, has finally been given by Dr. R. M. Theobald, the 
 refined and justly-minded author of ' Shakespeare Studies in 
 Baconian Light' ; for the Doctor has fully and absolutely convicted 
 Churton, not only of downright falsehood, but also of snobbery. 
 The reference, as above, to the dancing mania of the Middle Ages, 
 in a purely literary discussion, and particularly on a question 
 whether an author who made hundreds of quotations from the 
 Greek tragedies, in an English work of tragedies, was acquainted 
 with the Greek tongue in which only those tragedies can be 
 adequately understood, shows of itself a mind the character of 
 which entirely justifies and confirms Dr. Theobald's personal 
 criticism.
 
 70 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON 
 
 Manchester Literary Club. 
 " Why do a number of men and women, grossly ignorant 
 it is true, devote themselves to the fraud and cheat of pre- 
 tending to dethrone Shakspere? Why do they frame false 
 history, forge documents, assert to be truth what they know 
 to be untruth, for the poor and the pitiful, the beggarly re- 
 ward of dishonorable notoriety ? . . . . Save and except those 
 who are crazy, they are mean and contemptible cheats all." 
 —(1904). 
 
 H. K. D. Anders. 
 " I have not been able to discover any traces of Bacon in 
 Shakespeare's works." * — (1904). 
 
 The ' Irish Packet.' 
 " Ireland, I regret to think, has not wholly escaped the 
 contagion of the Baconian epidemic. Life would be too 
 short to plough this interminable sand, to winnow this 
 illimitable chaff." =— (1904). 
 
 John Rowlands. 
 "Some may consider such a work unnecessary, and the 
 author himself would have maintained that opinion a few 
 years ago. But having met with persons of all classes and 
 students of all grades who fancy that Bacon was the real 
 author, it is scarcely necessary to apologize for attempting to 
 show — rather than assert — that the idea is preposterous."^ 
 — (1904). 
 
 * This is taken from Herr Ander's Book, Schiften der Deutscken 
 Shakespeare Gesellschafi, Band i. It is devoted to an exposition of 
 Shakespeare's indebtedness to other authors. He traces nearly 
 2000 passages in the plays and poems to their originals elsewhere, 
 but not one to Bacon. He claims that not one that can be credited 
 to Bacon exists. 
 
 ^So far as we can judge at this distance, the brightest minds in 
 Ireland (where bright minds abound) are with Bacon; such as 
 George Moore, Judge Henn, Sir Fraucrs Cruise, Archbishop Walsh, 
 Rev. Wm. A. Sutton, S. J., Mouseigueur Molloy and Father Healy. 
 
 ^From the preface to the author's little book entitled 'Shakspere 
 still Enthroned.' Mr. Rowland's testimoay to the rapid spread of
 
 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON. 71 
 
 Richard Garnett. 
 Edmund Gosse. 
 
 "The parallel [between Shakespeare's The Tempest and 
 Bacon's The New Atlantis] suffices to display the ludicrous- 
 nesB of the identification of Bacon with Shakespeare. Shake- 
 speare waves his wand, and a new world starts up around 
 him. Bacon transplants the world he knows to an imaginary 
 locality. ^ So little of the wild and wonderful is there in his 
 work that one of the chief merits claimed for it is, to have 
 prefigured the institution of the royal society and to have not 
 improbably influenced its founders."^ — (1904). 
 
 C. Creighton, M. D. 
 
 " This is his [Shakspere's] personal judgment upon the 
 fame of Francis Bacon. It arises out of the word-play of 
 memory in two senses, the train of thought being that a man 
 whose own memory is short ought not to live long in the 
 memory of others. But an easy memory in this case meant 
 an easy conscience."^ — (1904). 
 
 Baconian sentiment among all classes in England at the present 
 time is perfectly accurate. A few years ago, a London journal, 
 bitterly hostile to us, estimated the number of Baconians in that 
 country and the U. S. combined at not less than a half million; 
 the number is now certainly among the millions. We learn from 
 the highest source that the same state of things exists in France. 
 It was said in a recent French periodical that " whereas French 
 books about English literature did not speak of this controversy a 
 few years ago, they now generally find room for a more or less 
 large discussion of it." 
 
 We shall take the liberty to regai'd Mr. Rowland's description of 
 the Droeshout engraving and also of the Stratford bust of Shak- 
 spere as ironical, until we are authoritatively assured to the 
 contrary. 
 
 ^ As though Shake-speare did not transplant the scene of The 
 Tempest to an " imaginary locality " ! They are both new worlds ; 
 both, islands of the imagination; and both intended to pre-figure 
 a future life. The editorial levity on this point is itself "ludi- 
 crous." 
 
 ^ From the History of English Literature, issued under the joint 
 editorship of Messrs. Garnett and Gosse. 
 
 "From Shakespeare's Story of his Life," by C. Creighton, p. 95. 
 The chief object of the writer of this book seems to have been, 
 we regret to say, to show the existence of gross immoralities in the
 
 72 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON 
 
 Walter. W. Skkat 
 " Said Hood : ' I know, if I'd a mind, 
 I could like Shakespeare write. 
 And soon could prove to all mankind 
 
 How well I can indite; 
 And yet,' remarked this genial man, 
 
 ' A little hitch I find 
 That somewhat mars my simple plan — ■ 
 I havn't got the mind ! ' 
 
 "So Bacon might have borne his part 
 And said: ' For sake of praise, 
 I well could find it in my heart 
 
 To write all Shakespeare's plays; 
 But ah! I feel a touch of fear 
 
 That somewhat makes me start; 
 I have the mind serene and clear. 
 But havn't got the heart.' " ^ 
 
 — (1904). 
 
 We bring this expose to a close by giving a specimen 
 of what may reasonably be considered on both sides 
 fair, impartial criticism, adapted to the present stage of 
 the enquiry : 
 
 The 'Madras Mail.' 
 " It seems to me something more than childish that your 
 
 life of Shakespeare and of Shakespeare's intimate associates. 
 When will this sort of thiug end'? When shall we have done with 
 the irrelevant and disgusting story of Mary Fitton ? Must we have 
 for the protection of our homes an index expurgatorius for works 
 on Shakespeare? Does intellectual blindness to the meaning of 
 the greatest and best dramas in the world's literature naturally 
 lead one into moral cesspools ? 
 
 Dr. Creighton tells us that in 'The Tempest' Francis Bacon is 
 personally held up by the dramatist to universal contempt, not 
 only as a man of weak memory and, therefore, of easy conscience, 
 but one also destined to oblivion at death ! 
 
 Weak memory! 
 
 Easy Conscience ! ! 
 
 Oblivion at death ! ! ! 
 
 1 Prof. Skeat's muse is ill-informed. Every statement made by 
 Bacon in his famous Essay of Love is repeated, almost word for 
 word, in the plays of Shake-speare ; while no more sincere and lofty 
 panegyric of this passion than his speech in (rray's Inn, recently 
 discovered, was ever uttered by man. Hereafter, this slander on 
 Bacon will not be deemed otherwise than vile!
 
 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON 73 
 
 Shakespearean commentator and biographer should use such 
 very objectionable language when speaking of Baconians. 
 This is ignorance, of course. Take Dr. Brandes, for example, 
 whose recent work on Shakespeare is a monument of patient 
 learning, though his fad is absurd. He calls Baconians ' less 
 than half educated,' * raw Americans and fanatical women,' 
 and so on. A man who indulges in violent language like 
 this is not to be trusted, and it is not surprising therefore 
 to find it coupled with the following astounding statement : 
 ' What most amazes a critical reader of the Baconian imperti- 
 nences is the fact that all the different arguments for the im- 
 possibility of attributing these plays to Shakspere are founded 
 upon the universality of knowledge and insight displayed 
 in them, which must have been unattainable, it is urged, to 
 a man of Shakspere's imperfect scholastic training.' Now 
 this is simply untrue ; and if Dr. Brandes were in this one 
 department of the subject a critical reader in any real sense 
 he would know it to be untrue. The arguments against the 
 William Shakspere authorship are not all founded on his 
 ' imperfect scholastic training ;' — there are others, as I have 
 detailed. But it is evident from Dr. Brandes's words that he 
 has not read the literature of the subject, — notably, he is 
 ignorant of the book by Mr. Edwin Reed, ' Bacon vs. Shak- 
 spere,' which sums up nearly all that has been written on 
 the other side. I say again, — disbelieve the Baconian theory 
 (I do not believe it myself) — but do not commit the worse 
 than absurdity of writing down an ass every one who does 
 believe it. The improbability of William Shakspere having 
 thought and set down the greatest imaginings the world has 
 known is so enormous that one may be forgiven for accepting 
 another improbability instead." — (1901). 
 
 The matter at issue in this conflict of opinion is at bottom 
 the validity and power of tradition. This accounts for 
 what is seemingly unaccountable, the heat of the contro- 
 versy as conducted for the defence. To these disputants.
 
 74 OPINIONS, PRO AND CON 
 
 it is but just to say, the Shaksperean \nyi\i has some- 
 thing of the sacredness of divinity ; and divinity itself is 
 largely a matter of tradition. Indeed, they may be 
 reviving Tertullian's famous maxim, Credo, quia ab- 
 surdum, paraphrased thus : Shakspere, an ignorant yokel, 
 wrote the learned dramas ; this I believe, because it is 
 repugnant to human reason. He died and was buried 
 seventeen feet deep in the ground under the church at 
 Stratford in 1(316, and yet made large additions to those 
 dramas after that date and burial ; this is certain, for it is 
 impossible.
 
 INDEX.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Abbott, Edwin A., 13, 44. 
 
 Academy and Literature, 68. 
 
 Adee, Alvey A., 49. 
 
 Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 49. 
 
 Allibone, S. A., 42. 
 
 Ames, Percy W., 24. 
 
 Anders, H. K. D., 70. 
 
 Anonymous, 22, 59. 
 
 Apollinaire, Guillaume, 39. 
 
 Aristotle, 21. 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, 23. 
 
 Afiquith, H. H., 60. 
 
 Astor, William Waldorph, 35. 
 
 Athenaeum, The, 39. 
 
 Beaumont, Francis, 3. 
 
 Bacon, Anthony, 21. 
 
 Bacon, Delia, 5, 6, 7, 9, 20, 39, 
 40, 42, 44. 
 
 Bacon, Lady Anne, 21. 
 
 Bacon, Leonard, 38. 
 
 Bacon, Theodore, 6. 
 
 Baldwin, Dwight, 46. 
 
 Barr, Samuel F., 26. 
 
 Bengough, Samuel Edmund, 15. 
 
 Bingham, John A., 22. 
 
 Birch, Thomas, 4. 
 
 Birmingham Daily Gazette, 23. 
 
 Bismarck, Prince, 18. 
 
 Blackstone, Sir William, 12. 
 
 Blackwood's Edinburgh Maga- 
 zine, 38. 
 
 Blatchford, Samuel, 50. 
 
 Bodley, Sir Thomas, 20. 
 
 Bompas, George C, 31. 
 
 Borman, Edwin, 20. 
 
 Brandes, George, 57, 73. 
 
 Bright, John, 15. 
 
 Brink, Bernard Ten, 21. 
 
 Brooks, Phillips, 49. 
 
 Brougham, Henry, Lord, 38. 
 
 Bryce, James, 51. 
 
 Burns, Robert, 63. 
 
 Butler, Benjamin F., 16. 
 
 Byron, Lord, 1. 
 
 Campbell, Chief Justice, 53. 
 
 Cantor, Georg, 21. 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 6, 38. 
 
 Castle, Edward James, 22. 
 
 Chamberlain, Joseph, 50. 
 
 Chambei's' Edinburgh Journal, 
 5. 
 
 Cheitle, Henry, 22. 
 
 Churchman, The, 68. 
 
 Clarke, James Freeman, 43. 
 
 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1, 13, 
 38. 
 
 Collier, John Payne, 2, 23. 
 
 Collins, J. Churton, 69. 
 
 Condell, Henry, 55. 
 
 Conway, M. D., 3. 
 
 Corson, Hiram, 42. 
 
 Coverdale, Thomas, 30. 
 
 Craven, Augustus, 7. 
 
 Creighton, C, 64, 71, 72. 
 
 Crocker, J. W., 38. 
 
 Cruise, Sir Francis, 27, 70. 
 
 Dana, Charles L., 61. 
 
 Davidson, Thomas, 23. 
 
 Davies, Sir John, 21, 42. 
 
 D'Eckstadt, Vitztbum, 14. 
 
 Desbats, Journal des, 33. 
 
 Dickens, Charles, 11. 
 
 Disraeli, Benjamin, 1. 
 
 Dixon, Theron, S. E., 20, 53. 
 
 Dixon, W. Hepworth, 11. 
 
 Dodge, Abigail, 17. 
 
 Dolbear, A. E., 19. 
 
 Dyce, Alexander, 23. 
 
 Edinburgh Journal, Chambers', 
 5. 
 
 Edinburgh Magazine, Black- 
 wood's, 38. 
 
 Edwards, Annie L., 28. 
 
 Eliot, George, 68. 
 
 Elizabeth, Queen, 66. 
 
 Ellsmere, Lord, 39. 
 
 Elze, Friedrich Karl, 46. 
 
 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1, 3. 
 
 Engel, Eduard, 44. 
 
 Essex, Earl of, 21. 
 
 Evans, Mary Ann, 68. 
 
 Fischer, Kuno, 12.
 
 78 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Fiske, John, 58, 57. 
 
 
 Ingleby, Holcombe, 55. 
 
 Fitton, Mary, 72. 
 
 
 Irving, Sir Henry, 5-3, 61. 
 
 Fletcher, John, 3 
 
 
 ' Is It Shakespeare?', Author of, 
 
 Frothingham, O. B., 19. 
 
 
 33. 
 
 Freidenberger, Herr, 62. 
 
 
 James First, 47. 
 
 Furness, H. H., 9, 40. 
 
 
 James, George, 21. 
 
 Furness, W. H., 9. 
 
 
 Johnson, Francis Howe, 33. 
 
 Gazette, Birmingham Daily, 
 
 23, 
 
 Jonson, Ben, 1, 16, 55, 56, 
 
 24. 
 
 
 Journal, A London, 55. 
 
 Gazette, Pall Mall, 25. 
 
 
 ' Journal des Debats ', 33. 
 
 George, Heury, 54. 
 
 
 Journalist, A., 31. 
 
 Gerviuus, George Gottfried, 4 
 
 ,5. 
 
 Keats, John, 38. 
 
 Gfrorer, August Friedrich, 3. 
 
 
 Keifer, J. Warren, 34. 
 
 Gilman, Daniel C, 49. 
 
 
 Keller, Helen, 58. 
 
 Gladstone, William E., 15, 50 
 
 
 Kittredge, George L., 55. 
 
 Godwin, Park, 59. 
 
 
 Knight, Charles, 16, 23. 
 
 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 
 
 Knott, J. Proctor, 47, 48. 
 
 49, 56. 
 
 
 Labouchere, Henry, 17. 
 
 Gosse, Edmund, 62, 71. 
 
 
 Lamartine, Alphonse de, 40. 
 
 Grant, Rt. Hon. Sir Mountstuart, 
 
 Lamb, Charles, 38, 49. 
 
 8. 
 
 
 Lang, Andrew, 50. 
 
 Greene, Robert, 22. 
 
 
 Lecky, W. E. H.. 52. 
 
 Grosart, A. B., 21. 
 
 
 Lee, Sidney, 60, 64, 65. 
 
 Grotius, Hugo, 12. 
 
 
 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 5. 
 
 Hallam, Henry, 2, 4, 57. 
 
 
 Lewis, Charlton T., 46. 
 
 Halliwell-Phillipps, J. O., 11, 
 
 23. 
 
 Libby, Charles F., 36. 
 
 Hamilton, Gail, 17. 
 
 
 Livermore, Mary A., 19. 
 
 Harper's New Monthly Maga- 
 
 Lome, Marquess of, 54. 
 
 zine, 41. 
 
 
 Lowell, James Russell, 10. 
 
 Harris, W. T., 15. 
 
 
 Lytton, E. Bulwer, 56. 
 
 Hart, Joseph C, 3. 
 
 
 Macaulay, Thomas B., 56, 57. 
 
 Haweis, W. R., 16. 
 
 
 Madden, D. H.. 55, 56. 
 
 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 6, 13. 
 
 
 Madras Mail, 72. 
 
 Hawthorne, Sophia, 7. 
 
 
 Maiste, M. le, 4. 
 
 Hazlitt, William, 54. 
 
 
 Malloch, W. H.,27. 
 
 Hazlitt, W. Carew, 58. 
 
 
 Malone, Edmund, 23. 
 
 Head, Franklin H., 66. 
 
 
 Manchester Guardian, The, 58. 
 
 Healey, Father, 70. 
 
 
 Manchester Literary Club, The, 
 
 Heminge, John, 55. 
 
 
 70. 
 
 Henn, Judge, 27, 70. 
 
 
 Manchester, L. C, 22. 
 
 Henry Irving Shakespeare, The, 
 
 Marston, R. B., 31. 
 
 47. 
 
 
 Martin, Sir Theodore, 46. 
 
 Hill, Lysander, 17. 
 
 
 Massey, Gerald, 15, 47. 
 
 Hippocrates, 63. 
 
 
 Masson, David, 6, 47. 
 
 Holmes, Nathaniel, 8, 9, 40, 
 
 42, 
 
 Matthew, Sir Toby, 14, 22. 
 
 57, 68. 
 
 
 McKenna, Sir Joseph N., 16. 
 
 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 3, 
 
 10, 
 
 Medwin, Thomas, 1. 
 
 11, 12. 
 
 
 Melbourne, Lord, 38. 
 
 Homer, 10, 13, 52. 
 
 
 Milnes, Richard Monckton, 8. 
 
 Houghton, Lord, 8. 
 
 
 Milton, John, 13, 56, 62. 
 
 Hughes, Thomas, 50. 
 
 
 Molloy, Monseigneur, 70. 
 
 Hunter, Joseph, 2. 
 
 
 Morgan, Appleton, 8. 36, 53. 
 
 Ingersol, Robert G., 51. 
 
 
 Moore, George, 35, 70. 
 
 Ingleby, Clement M., 46. 
 
 
 Morris, Sir Lewis, 14.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 79 
 
 Miiller, Mylius, Karl, 3. 
 Murray, J. A. H., 68. 
 Nation, The New York, 68. 
 Newman, Francis W., 13. 
 Newman, John Henry Cardinal, 
 
 10. 
 News, The Daily, 31. 
 News, The London Illustrated, 
 
 63. 
 North American Review, 39. 
 North, Christopher, 39. 
 O'Connor, William D.. 12, 13. 
 Oliphant, Margaret, 47. 
 Open Court, The, 34. 
 Packet, The Irish, 70. 
 Pall Mall Gazette, 25. 
 Palmerston, Lord, 7, 10. 
 Parkman, Francis, 16. 
 Peel, Sir Robert, 38. 
 Penzance. Lord, 82. 
 People, The Daily, 65. 
 Periodical, A London, 64. 
 Phelps, Edward J., 52, 53. 
 Post, The Morning, .50. 
 Pott, Mrs. Henry, 12. 
 Prewen, Thomas, 9. 
 Putnam, Arthur A., 34. 
 Quarterly Review, The, 57. 
 Quincy, Josiah P. , 32. 
 Raleigh, Sir Walter, 3, 12, 13, 22. 
 Raynal, Louis de, 14. 
 Remusat, M. de, 14. 
 Romanes, George J., 51. 
 Rowlands, John, 70, 71. 
 Ruggles, Henry J., 10. 
 Russell, Lord John, 38. 
 Saintsbury, George, 53. 
 Saturday Review, The, 54, 68. 
 Schlegel, A. W. von, 1, 31. 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 38. 
 Scribner's Monthly Magazine, 42. 
 Shelley, Percy Bisshe, 38, 56. 
 Sherman, Gen. W. T., 48. 
 Sinnet, A. P., 28. 
 Skeat, Walter W., 72. 
 Smith, Goldwin, 52. 
 Smith, William Henry, 7, 9, 39, 
 
 40. 
 Smithson, E. W., 25. 
 Snead, John L. T., 17. 
 
 Spear, Ellis, 51. 
 
 Spedding, James, 5, 10, 40, 41, 
 
 42,56. 
 Spofford, Harriet Prescott, 16. 
 Stapfer, Paul, 44. 
 Stedman, Edmund C, 54, 62. 
 Steevens, George, 23. 
 Stephen, Leslie, 47. 
 Stewart, Helen Hiuton, 29. 
 Stopes, Charlotte C, 47. 
 Strater, Theodore, 23. 
 Stronach, George, 60, 64, 68, 69. 
 Sutton, William A., 27, 70. 
 Swing, David, 15. 
 Taine, Hippolyte A., 56. 
 Talbot, George F., 37. 
 Tell, William, 62. 
 Temple, Edward L., 66. 
 Tennyson, Alfred, 39, 53, 47. 
 Tertulliau, 74. 
 Theobald, Lewis, 84. 
 Theobald, Robert M., 11, 15, 17, 
 
 69. 
 Theobald, William, 19. 
 Thomson, William, 11. 
 Times, The East Anglian, 65, 
 Times, The, 63. 
 Townsend, George H., 39. 
 Vischer, Friedrich Theodore, 23. 
 Wallace, Alfred Russel, 55. 
 Walsh, Archbishop, 70. 
 Webb, Judge, 30, 35. 
 Westminster Review, The, 51. 
 Whipple, Edwin P., 10. 
 White, Richard Grant, 12, 13, 45. 
 White, Thomas W., 19. 
 Whitman, Sidney, 18. 
 Whitman, Walt, 14. 
 Whittier, John Greenleaf, 16, 23. 
 Whitney, W. D-, 50. 
 Wilde, Sir James Plaisted, 32. 
 W. H. W., 37. 
 Willard, Frances E., 19. 
 Winchell, Alexander, 15. 
 Winter, William, 54. 
 Winthrop, Robert C, 49. 
 Wordsworth, Bishop, 40. 
 Wordsworth, William, 38. 
 World, The Literary, 62.
 
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