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UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
LIBRARY

by the

ONTARIO LEGISLATIVE
LIBRARY

1980

BACONIAN ESSAYS

E. W. SMITHSON

WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND TWO ESSAYS
BY

SIR GEORGE GREENWOOD

LONDON

CECIL PALMER
OAKLEY HOUSE, 14-18 BLOOMSBURY ST., W.C. i

First
Edition
Copy-
rig ht
1922

CONTENTS

PAGE

INTRODUCTORY (by G. GREENWOOD) ... 7

Five Essays by E. W. SMITHSON

THE MASQUE OF " TIME VINDICATED " . .41

SHAKESPEARE — A THEORY .... 69
BEN JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE . . .97

BACON AND " POESY " . . . .123

" THE TEMPEST" AND ITS SYMBOLISM . . 149

Two Essays by G. GREENWOOD

THE COMMON KNOWLEDGE OF SHAKESPEARE AND BACON 161
THE NORTHUMBERLAND MANUSCRIPT . . . 187

FINAL NOTE (G. G.) . . . . . 223

BACONIAN ESSAYS

INTRODUCTORY

HENRY JAMES, in a letter to Miss Violet Hunt, thus
delivers himself with regard to the authorship of
the plays and poems of " Shakespeare " * : — " I am

ERRATA.
Page 17 line 12 for " hat " read " that."

„ 19 line 13 from bottom for " Spain " read " Spa in."
„ 38 line 7 „ „ for " Magwell " read " Mugwell."
„ 169 line 13 „ „ for " swet " read " sweet."
„ 193 line 10 from bottom for " tilt-hard "read " tilt-yard."

speare " were, in truth and in fact, the work of " the
man from Stratford," (as he subsequently, in the
same letter, styles " the divine William ") is one
of the greatest of all the many delusions which have,

* Letters of Henry James. Macmillan, 1920, Vol. I., p. 432.

BACONIAN ESSAYS

INTRODUCTORY

HENRY JAMES, in a letter to Miss Violet Hunt, thus
delivers himself with regard to the authorship of
the plays and poems of " Shakespeare " * : — " I am
* a sort of ' haunted by the conviction that the divine
William is the biggest and most successful fraud
ever practised on a patient world. The more I
turn him round and round the more he so affects

me."

Now I do not for a moment suppose that in so
writing the late Mr. Henry James had any intention
of affixing the stigma of personal fraud upon William
Shakspere of Stratford-upon-Avon. Doubtless he
used the term " fraud " in a semi -jocular vein as
we so often hear it made use of in the colloquial
language of the present day, and his meaning is
nothing more, and nothing less, than this, viz.,
that the belief that the plays and poems of " Shake
speare " were, in truth and in fact, the work of " the
man from Stratford," (as he subsequently, in the
same letter, styles " the divine William ") is one
of the greatest of all the many delusions which have,

* Letters of Henry James. Macmillan, 1920, Vol. I., p. 432.

BACONIAN ESSAYS

from time to time, afflicted a credulous and " a
patient world/' He believed that when, in the year
1593, the dedication of Venus and Adonis to the
Young Earl of Southampton was signed " William
Shakespeare/' that signature did not, in truth and
in fact, stand for the Stratford player who never so
signed himself, but for a very different person, in
quite another sphere of life, who desired to preserve
his anonymity. He believed that when plays were
published in the name of " Shake-speare " that
name did not, in truth and in fact, stand for " the
man from Stratford/' but again for that same person
—or it might be, and in certain cases certainly was,
for some other — who desired to publish plays under
the mask of a convenient pen-name. And if the
authorship of these poems and plays came, in course
of time, to be attributed to William Shakspere, the
player from Stratford-upon-Avon, who himself
never uttered a word, or wrote a syllable, or took
any steps whatever to claim the authorship of those
poems and plays for himself, but was content
merely to play the part of " William the Silent "
from first to last, there is, surely, no reason to brand
him as a cheat and a " fraud " upon that account,
and we may be quite sure that that highly-gifted
and distinguished man of literature, Henry James —
one of the intellectuals of our day — had no intention
of so branding him.

A lady, a short time ago, wrote a book to
explain the play of Hamlet in quite a new
light, by making reference to the special political
circumstances of the time when it appeared,
such as the " Scottish succession," the character

INTRODUCTORY

of James I, certain events in the lives of Mary
Queen of Scots, Burleigh, Essex, Southampton,
Elizabeth Vernon, and other historical figures, and
producing " detailed analogies between episodes
of contemporary history and the play/'* and, in
reply to certain objections raised by a well-known
critic, she essayed to justify herself by an appeal to
the doctrine of " Relativity/' which, as she declared
with some warmth, had come to stay whether her
captious critic wanted it or not !

This lofty invocation of Einstein's theory of Time,
Space, and the Universe — a theory so difficult of
comprehension that only a favoured few can even
affect to understand it — in support of a new inter
pretation of one of Shakespeare's plays, was,
certainly, somewhat ridiculous, but the lady was
quite right in her contention — which would equally
hold good though Einstein had never lived or taught
—that in forming our judgments on men long gone,
whether of their characters or their actions, or their
sayings or their writings, we must ever bear in
mind the views, the beliefs, the opinions, and the
special circumstances of the time and the society
in which they lived. Now, it is well known that in
Elizabethan and Jacobean times opinion with
regard to what I may call literary deception was very
different from what it is at the present day when
we at any rate affect much greater scrupulosity
with regard to these matters. Such literary de
ceptions, which in these days would be condemned
as " frauds," were, in those times, constantly

* See Times Literary Supplement, June 2, 1921. Article headed
" Hamlet and Histoiy."

BACONIAN ESSAYS

and habitually practised, and considered quite
venial sins, if, indeed, they were looked upon as
sins at all. That is a fact which should never be
lost sight of when we are considering problems
of authorship, or writings of dubious interpretation
(such as some of Ben Jonson's, e.g.) in those long-
gone and very different times.

Now, I am one of those who agree with the late
Mr. Henry James, and with the present highly-
distinguished French scholar and historian, Professor
Abel Lefranc — I refer here to his negative views
only — with regard to the authorship of the plays
and poems of ' Shakespeare/' In my humble
opinion (which, to be quite honest, I may say is not
" humble " at all !), that the plays and poems of
" Shakespeare " were not written by William
Shakspere, the player who came from Stratford, is
as certain as anything can be which is not susceptible
of actual mathematical proof. Who then wrote the
plays ? (Let us leave the poems on one side for the
present). Well, that the work of many pens appears
in the Folio of 1623 *s surely indisputable. Few
if any, of the " orthodox " would be found to deny
it. There is little, if any, of " Shakespeare "
whoever he was — in the first part of Henry VI,
and, surely, not much more in the second and third
parts. Very little, if any part, of The Taming of the
Shrew is " Shakespearean." The great majority
of critics exclude Titus altogether. The work of
pens other than the Shakespearean pen is to be found
in Pericles, and TtJftOft^and TroilusandCresssida, and
even in Macbeth. Henry VIII, though published
as by " Shakespeare," was almost undoubtedly the

INTRODUCTORY

work of Fletcher and Massinger in collaboration.*
The list might be added to but it is unnecessary to
do so. I repeat, the work of many pens is to be
found in the Folio of 1623, but there is, of course,
one man whose work eclipses that of all the rest,
one man who stands pre-eminent and unrivalled,
towering high above the others ; one man of whom
it may be said, as of Marcellus of old, that insignis
ingreditur, victorque viros supereminet omnes. Find
that man, find the author of Hamlet, and Lear, and
Othello — to give but a few examples — and you will
have found the true " Shakespeare." But set your
hearts at rest ; you will never find him in the man
whose vulgar and banal life (in the course of which
not one — I do not say generous but — even respect
able action can be discovered by all the researches
of his biographers) is to be read in the pages of
Halliwell-Phillipps and Sir Sidney Lee — the life
of which so little is known, and yet so much too
much !

Meantime it is amusing, or would be so if it were
not so lamentable, to see our solemn and entirely
self-satisfied Pundits and Mandarins of <!< Shake
spearean " literature ever trying to see daylight
through the millstone of the Stratfordian faith ;
ever broaching some brand-new theory, and affecting
to find something in this Shakespearean literature
which nobody ever found before them, but which
as they fondly imagine, somehow, and in some way,
tends to support the old outworn Stratfordian
tradition. Perhaps some " prompt copy " of an

* See Sidelights on Shakespeare by H. Dugdale Sykes. (The Shake
speare Head Press, Stratford-upon-Avon. 1919.)

BACONIAN ESSAYS

old Elizabethan drama is discovered. It is hailed
with exultation as affording proof that plays in those
times were printed from " prompt copies," and
further cryptic arguments are adduced in support
of the absurd theory that the Stratford player dashed
off the plays of " Shakespeare, " currente calamo,
and handed them over to his fellow " deserving
men/' Heminge and Condell, and the rest, with
" scarse a blot " upon them, and that the plays were
printed from these precious " unblotted autographs."
An old Manuscript Play is found. It is the work of
several pens. In it are discovered three pages in
an unknown hand. See now ! Here is a hand " of
the same class " as the " Shakespeare " (i.e.,
" Shakspere ") signatures ! Why, it is Shakspere's
own handwriting ! Look at Shakspere's will — the
will in which no book or manuscript is mentioned,
but wherein are small bequests to Shakspere's
fellow-players, those " deserving men " Burbage,
and Heminge, and Condell, to buy them rings
withal, and of the testator's sword, and parcel-gilt
bowl, and " second-best bedstead " —and there
you will find three words well and distinctly written
in a firm hand — " By me William." Yes, and the
" W " of " William " is so carefully written that it
even has " the ornamental dot " under the curve of
the right limb thereof ! But why, then, are the
signatures themselves such miserable, illegible
scrawls ? Oh, fools and blind ! Cannot you see
that player William in this case reversed the usual
procedure ; that he intended to sign the last of the
three pages of his Will first (" But why ? "—
" Oh, never mind why ! ") ; that the poor man was

INTRODUCTORY

in extremis (true he lived another month after signing,
and his Will witnesses that he was " in perfect
health and memorie, God be praysed ! " Mais cela
n'empeche pas] ; and that he made a tremendous
effort, and wrote the words " By me William," in
a fine distinct hand — " ornamental dot " and all ! —
and then collapsed utterly and could only make
illiterate scrawls for his surname, and the other two
signatures. But these words, " By me William,"
are in the same handwriting as that of the " addition "
to Sir Thomas More \ What ? You say they were
manifestly written by the Law Scrivener ! What ?
You say the handwriting of this " addition " differs
manifestly and fundamentally from the handwriting
of the " Shakspere " signatures (which, wretched
scrawls as they are, differ profoundly one from the
other), as anybody can see who does not happen to
be a " paleographer " with an idee fixe \ What ?
You say that ! Yah, fool ! Yah, fanatic ! What
do you know about it, I should like to know !*

Such is all too frequently the language of the soi-
disant " orthodox" to the poor " heretic" ; such
are " the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy
takes " !

Then we have a man — an " orthodox " wise
acre — who tells us that, without doubt, the " dark
lady " of the Sonnets was Mistress Mary Fitton,
and we are to subscribe to the belief that Mary
Fitton, one of Elizabeth's Maids of Honour, had an
intrigue with a common player — one " i' the
statute ! " It is nothing to tell the people who have

* The theory that the handwriting of this " addition " to the play of
Sir Thomas More is the same handwriting as that of the Shakspere
signatures, is, I do not hesitate to say, one of the most absurd
propositions ever advanced even in Shakespearean controversy.

BACONIAN ESSAYS

made this wonderful discovery that Mary Fitton
was not a " dark lady," but a fair lady, as her por
traits at Arbury show. It is nothing to tell them
that, though among the remarkable contemporaneous
documents in the Muniment Room at Arbury there
is much mention of Mary Fitton 's liaison with that
proud nobleman, Lord Pembroke, not a breath is
to be discovered of any suggestion of her so degrading
herself as to have an intrigue with " a man-player "
— one who was a " rogue and vagabond " were it
not for the licence of a great personage. No, all
this goes for nothing when it is necessary somehow,
by hook or by crook, to identify the Stratford player
with the author of the Sonnets of " Shakespeare/'
O miseras hominum mentes, O pectora cceca !

Then yet another finds this " dark lady " in the
person of the wife of an Oxford Inn Keeper, with
whom, forsooth, player Shakspere had an intrigue,
on his way from Stratford to London, or vice versa,
and laborious investigations are undertaken, and
many learned letters are written to the Press about
this other imaginary " dark lady >: — " that woman
colour'd ill "*— and all the family history of the
Davenants is exploited in this foolish quest. Then,
again, another makes the discovery that William
Shakspere, the Stratford player, had conceived a
feeling of violent hatred against " Resolute John
Florio," the translator of Montaigne (who was, by
the way, so far as we know, a good worthy man),
so he caricatures this hateful person in the hateful (!)
character of Jack Falstaff— the Falstaff of King
Henry IV \ But we don't hate Jack Falstaff ! On

*See Sonnet 144.

INTRODUCTORY

the contrary we all love old Jack Falstaff, in spite
of his many faults and failings. We can't help
loving him, for his unfailing good humour and his
unrivalled wit ! " Oh, that is nothing, nothing,"
says our critic from across the Atlantic — one Mr.
Acheson of New York — who has made this grand
discovery. ' Will Shakspere of Stratford hated
Florio, so he has lampooned him and ridiculed him
in this hateful character of Falstaff ! Of that there
is no possible doubt. I am Sir Oracle, and when I
speak let no dog bark ! *"

And so I might go on to multiply the examples
of this " Stratfordian " folly. And we, who see the
absurdity of all this, are called " Fanatics ! " But
what is " Fanaticism " ? It is the madness which
possesses the worshippers at the shrine. These men
have bowed themselves down at the traditional
Stratfordian Shrine ; they have accepted without
thinking the dogmas of the Stratfordian faith ;
they are impervious- to reasoning and to common
sense ; they have surrendered their judgment ;
!< their eyes they have closed, lest at any time they
should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears,
and should understand with their hearts, and should
be converted " to truth and reason. Verily, these
are the real " fanatics."

Let me for a moment, before passing on, call

* It is only necessary to read the life of John Florio in the Diet, of
National Biography or the Encyc. Brit, to appreciate the absurdity of
this attempt to find him in Shakespeare's Falstaff. An almost equally
silly attempt has been made by another sapient critic to identify him
with Holofernes in Love's Labour's Lost. Now no two characters could
be more dissimilar than those of Falstaff and Hblofernes, yet Florio
according to one wiseacre was the prototype of the former, and according
to another wiseacre of the latter ! But there is no limit to the absurdities
which are symptomatic of the rabies Sfifatfordiana.

BACONIAN ESSAYS

attention to some words written by those distin
guished " Shakespearean " critics Dr. Richard
Garnett, and Dr. Edmund Gosse, in their Illustrated
English Literature. They speak of " that knowledge
of good society, and that easy and confident attitude
towards mankind which appears in Shakespeare's
plays from the first, and which are so unlike what
might have been expected from a Stratford rustic. . .
The first of his plays were undoubtedly the three
early comedies, Love's Labour's Lost, The Comedy
of Errors, and The Two Gentlemen of Verona, which
must have appeared in 1590-1591, or perhaps in
the latter year only. The question of priority among
them is hard to settle, but we may concur with Mr.
[now Sir Sidney] Lee in awarding precedence to
Love's Labour's Lost. All three indicate that the
runaway Stratford youth had, within five or six
years, made himself the perfect gentleman, master
of the manners and language of the best society
of his day, and able to hold his own with any
contemporary writer."*

Now this miraculous " runaway Stratford youth,"
came to London " a Stratford rustic," in the year
1587,1 and, according to his biographers, being a
penniless adventurer, had to seek for a living in
' very mean employments," as Dr. Johnson says,
whether as horse-holder, or " call boy," or " super "
on the stage, or what you will. His parents were
entirely illiterate, and he left his two daughters in

* English Literature. An Illustrated Record (1903), pp. 199, 200,
202. Italics mine.

fSo says that distinguished Shakespearean scholar, Mr. Fleay, who
points out that in the previous year the theatres were closed owing to
the plague.

INTRODUCTORY

the same darkness of ignorance. We may assume
that he had attended for a few years at the " Free
School " at Stratford (as Rowe, his earliest bio
grapher, calls it), although there is really no evidence
in support of that assumption, but it is admitted even
by the most zealous and orthodox Stratfordians that
he " had received only an imperfect education."*
But I will not again recapitulate the facts (real or
supposed) of this mean and vulgar life. Let
the reader, I say again, study it in the pages of
Halliwell-Phillipps, and Sir Sidney Lee.f

And now let us consider for a moment .hat
extraordinary play, Love's Labour's Lost, which,
as we have seen, " appeared " in 1590 or 1591,
according to Messrs. Garnett and Gosse, but of
which Mr. Fleay writes: " The date of the original
production cannot well be put later than 1589." It
was, as the " authorities " are all agreed, Shake
speare's first drama, and it is remarkable for this
fact, among other things, that unlike other Shake
spearean plays it is not an old play re-written, nor is
the plot taken from some other writer. The plot of
Love's Labour's Lost is an original one.

And now let us see what Professor Lefranc, who
has made a very special study of this play, has to
tell us about it, premising that I do not cite his
remarks as " authoritative/' but merely as a clear
statement of the facts of the case by one who has
exceptional knowledge of the history of the time in
which the action of the play is supposed to take
place.

*Sir E. Maunde Thompson, in Shakespeare's Handwriting, p. 26.
fSo far, that is, as Sir Sidney's Life of Shakespeare is, or purports to
be, biographical, and setting aside the " fanciful might-have-beens."
B 17

BACONIAN ESSAYS

" Everybody knows," he writes, " that the scene
of this very original comedy is laid at the Court of
Navarre, at a date nearly contemporaneous with the
play, when Henri de Bourbon was the reigning
sovereign of this little kingdom, before he became
Henri IV of France. . . . That the author of
Love's Labour's Lost knew and had visited the Court
of Navarre is at once obvious to anyone who will
study the play without any preconceived hypothesis
and who takes the trouble to learn something about
the history of this little Kingdom of Nerac. . .
All the explanations which have been given of this
play, the first of the Shakespearean dramas, in order
to bolster up the theory of its composition by
Shakspere the player at the very outset of his career
as a playwright, as also every element of the comedy
itself, and every known incident in the life of the
Stratford player, prove the impossibility of his being
the author of it. All these theories and hypotheses
put forward during the last 120 years are of such
total improbability, indeed of such miserable
tenuity, that some day people will wonder how they
could possibly find acceptance for so long."

M. Lefranc cites Montegut, a French Shake
spearean scholar and a critic of noted insight and
perspicacity, who writes: "It is extraordinary to
see how Shakespeare is faithful even in the most
minute details to historical truth and to local colour,"
and he proceeds to demonstrate that many allusions
in this wonderful play of Love's Labour's Lost
cannot be properly understood or appreciated
without reference to the memoirs of the celebrated
Marguerite de Valois, who is herself the " Princess

INTRODUCTORY

of France " of the comedy (in the original edition
called " The Queen "*), who comes with her suite
to visit Henri at his Court of Nerac. The Princess
of France, then, was originally Queen Marguerite
of Navarre, and this comedy represents her as coming
to rejoin her husband at Nerac to endeavour to
regain his love, and to settle many questions relative
to her dowry of Aquitaine. That this journey
actually took place, that Marguerite paid a long visit
to the Court of Navarre where a series of entertain
ments were held in her honour, and that the question
of her dowry in Aquitaine was then discussed at
length is established by the Memoirs of Marguerite
de Valois.f The author, then, had in his mind
events of contemporaneous history which had taken
place at the Court of Navarre, and with which he
appears to have been personally familiar. The
memoirs, too, throw light on several passages of the
drama which would be obscure without them.
Take (e.g.) Act II, Sc. i, where Biron asks Rosaline,
" Did not I dance with you at Brabant once ? "
Here we have an allusion to the visit of Marguerite
to Spaljn 1577, of which a full account is given in
her Memoirs, where she tells of balls at Mons,
Namur, and Liege, all in a country which was at
that time constantly spoken of as Brabant. Again,
in Act V, Sc. 2, there is an obscure allusion, which
seems to be satisfactorily explained by a reference
to the story of the unfortunate Helene de Tournon,

* She so appears in the Quarto, and also in the Folio in certain places
(II. i and IV. i, e.g.) where, as in other passages, the play seems to have
been imperfectly revised.

t Boyet in the play (II. i) calls upon the Princess (or Queen) to reflect
that her mission to Navarre was to raise a claim " of no less weight than
Aquitaine, a dowry for a Queen."

BACONIAN ESSAYS

related by Marguerite in her Memoirs. Further,
in Act V, Sc. 2, we have an allusion to the manner
in which Henri of Navarre, the " Vert Galant,"
wrote, prepared, and sealed his love letters, as
though the author was familiar with the amorous
King's poetical letter addressed by him to the
" Charmante Gabrielle " d'Estres ; while the
circumstances described in Act I, Sc. i, are ex
plained in the light of fact by a letter from Cobham
to Walsingham dated from Paris in June, 1583.

But it would take far too much time to dilate
further upon this, the first of the Shakespearean
plays. I can only refer my readers, for further
light, to Professor Lefranc's work Sous le Masque de
William Shakespeare*

Yet we are required to believe — nay, we are
" fanatics " if we do not believe — that this extraordi
nary play was composed by the " Stratford rustic "
some two years after he had " run away " from
Stratford, and, further, that he composed two other
remarkable comedies, The Comedy of Errors, and
The Two Gentlemen of Verona, just about the same
time ! Verily this is a faith which does not remove
mountains, but simply swallows them whole — a
faith which appears to me more worthy of Bedlam
than of the intelligence of rational human beings.
On the other hand, there is no difficulty whatever
in believing that this unique play — which shows
that the author of it was not only a " perfect gentle
man, master of the manners and language of the
best society of the day," but also one familiar with
the doings, and " happenings " and amusements

* Vol. II, ch. 7.

INTRODUCTORY

and entourage of the Court of Henri of Navarre at
Nerac on the occasion of the visit of Marguerite de
Valois to that Court — was written by a man who
lived and moved in a very different sphere of society
from that in which Shakspere of Stratford lived and
moved, but who was desirous of concealing his
identity as a playwright under a convenient mask-
name.

Yet, as M. Lefranc truly says, " L'heterodoxie
dans ce domaine [the " Shakespearean " authorship
to wit] a paru jusqu'a present aux maitres des
universites et aux erudits, une opinion de mauvais
gout, temeraire et malseante, dont la science patentee
n'avait pas a s'occuper, sauf pour la condamner.'^
But he continues — I will now translate — " I am
convinced that every one who has preserved an
independent opinion concerning the Shakespeare
problem will recognise that the old positions of the
traditional doctrine can no longer be maintained. . . .
The laws of psychology, and, what is more, of simple
common sense, ought to banish for ever the absurd
theory which would have us believe in an incom
parable writer whose life was absolutely out of
harmony with the marvellous works which appeared
in his name. It is time to take decisive action
against that immense error, and against the in
credible naivete upon which it rests."

!< Simple common sense." Aye, but when I
spoke not long ago to a well-known writer, who is a
Stratfordian enrage, of " common sense " in this
matter, what was his reply ? " Oh, damn common

* Sous le Masque, vol. I, 21. He might, I think, have included
certain editors of newspapers and magazines in his statement, though
not always " trudits."

BACONIAN ESSAYS

sense ! " — a characteristic interjection which might
well be adopted as the motto of all the " Strat-
fordian " highbrows of the present day.

But, adds Professor Lefranc, " If many still
refuse to admit the existence of a Shakespeare
problem, yet the time is at hand when nobody will
any longer venture to deny it, unless he is prepared
at the same time to deny all the evidence in the case.
It is clear that a new era of Shakespearean study has
recently presented itself. Scepticism with regard
to the Stratford man is spreading in spite of the
resistance of the multifarious defenders of the old
tradition. A number of beliefs, accepted for many
years as dogmas, are disappearing every day. The
rock of credulity is crumbling away. The Strat-
fordians will, sooner or later, be reduced, under
the pressure of a more enlightened public opinion,
to change their tactics and modify the assumptions
of their creed. In truth, speaking generally, the
best-established reproach to which the learned men
who have concerned themselves with Shakespeare,
according to the rules of Stratfordian orthodoxy,
have laid themselves open, is not so much that they
have maintained the traditional doctrine with regard
to the poet-actor, but rather that in the face of the
innumerable enigmas which are involved in the
history of his life, and his [supposed] works, and
even of the text of those works, they have never
had the candour to admit even the existence of all
these obscure problems. At every step in Shake
spearean study these difficulties and incoherences
are encountered, but these learned men affect not
to see them. . . . Truly, in view of such superb

INTRODUCTORY

assurance, the lay reader could never imagine the
existence of all the gratuitous assumptions, the
naive assertions, the inadmissible interpretations
that are to be found in the works of these gentle
men, which the public have been accustomed to
accept as infallible authorities. Yet, even the most
famous and the most admired amongst them would
have to yield to an investigation conducted according
to the simple rules of the art of reasoning, that is to
say of sound common sense. The hour has come
when the representatives of the ' Shakespearean '
dogma will have to change their attitude. They
will have to renounce both their silence and their
credulity. Above all, they will have to admit the
necessity of inquiries, and discussions hostile to
their creed, to make a tabula rasa of many points,
and to take in hand once more the investigation
thereof ab imis fundamentis, resolutely putting away
those prejudices which have so long blinded them
to the truth."

So writes Professor Abel Lefranc, with much
more to the same purport and effect, and, in my
judgment, he writes both wisely and well. But
if he really believes that our hidebound Pundits
and Mandarins of the Stratfordian faith will ever
" put away those prejudices which have so long
blinded them to the truth," and give impartial
consideration to the facts of the Shakespeare
Problem in the light of reason and " common-
sense," I fear me he reckons without his host and
is destined to be very sadly undeceived.*

* M. Abel Lefranc, it may be mentioned, is Professeur au College de
France, and one of our highest authorities on Rabelais and the period
of the Renaissance, not to mention Moliere, and other historical periods.
" But, surely, we need not go to a Frenchman for enlightenment on our

BACONIAN ESSAYS

We are brought back, however, to the question :
Who, then, is the real "Shakespeare"? That
is a question which I have never attempted to
answer. It has been quite sufficient for me to
confine my arguments to the negative side of the
Shakespeare Problem. The positive, or constructive
side I have hitherto been content to leave to others.

Now, there is a large number of persons, many
of them rational and intelligent men and women, of
quite sound mind and understanding, who believe
that the real " Shakespeare " is to be found in the
person of Francis Bacon. But there are " Baconians
and Baconians." There are the wild Baconians
who find Bacon everywhere, but especially in ciphers,
cryptograms, anagrams, acrostics, and in all sorts of
occult figures and emblems* — those who believe
amongst other things, that Bacon was the son of
Queen Elizabeth, that he lived in philosophic
concealment many years after the date usually
assigned as that of his death, that he wrote prac-

great English poet ! " wrote a British commentator in the Press the other
day — a most characteristic utterance, and superbly illustrative of the
insular conceit which no entente cordiale seems to have the power to
dissipate. But is it not highly probable that a French scholar, applying
himself to the study of the Shakespeare Problem with an impartial
mind, with no innate or national prejudices to obscure his vision,
being himself an enthusiastic worshipper at the shrine of Shakespeare,
the poet and dramatist, might be able to throw light upon many things
which are '* beyond the skyline " of those who have grown up in the
school of an old and unquestioned tradition to which they cling as
though it were part and parcel of the British constitution, and, as it
were, a necessary ingredient of the national glory ?

* I am, I need scarcely say, very far from denying the possible existence
of ciphers, cryptograms, and anagrams, whether in " Shakespeare's "
plays and poems or in other literature of that day. It is known that
such things were frequently made use of by writers of the sixteenth
and early seventeenth centuries. Bacon himself gives us an example
of the biliteral cipher, and it is known that he often employed such
cryptic methods of writing. It is none the less true that the search for
these things by " Baconian " enthusiasts of the present day has fre
quently led to very distressing results, for " that way madness lies."

INTRODUCTORY

tically all the English literature worthy of that name
of the Elizabethan and Jacobean period, and that
he hid his " Shakespearean " manuscripts in the
mud of the River Wye or some other equally in
appropriate and ridiculous place, where no sane
man would ever dream of looking for them.

The wild and unrestrained " Baconians " have,
undoubtedly, done great injury to the cause which
they desire to advocate ; and not only have they
injured that cause, but they have greatly prejudiced
the discussion of the Shakespeare Problem as a
whole. For in such cases we are all liable to be
:< tarred by the same brush, " and the sanest of
" Anti-Stratfordian " reasoners has, unfortunately,
not escaped the back-wash of the ridicule which
these eccentrics have brought upon themselves.

There are, however, " Baconians " of another
class — the sane " Baconians " who are content to
argue the matter — and some of them have argued
it with great knowledge and ability — in the calm
light of reason and common sense. Of these one
of the sanest and ablest was my friend the late
Edward Walter Smithson, whose little book Shake
speare — Bacon. An Essay * published anonymously
some three and twenty years ago, attracted no little
attention, and did much to help the cause in support
of which it was written. He published, however,
nothing more on the subject till 1913, in November
of which year there appeared in The Nineteenth
Century an article from his pen entitled " Ben
Jonson's Pious Fraud." The greater part of this
article I have quoted by way of preface to his essay

* Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1899.

BACONIAN ESSAYS

now published on Jonson 's Masque of Time
Vindicated* and it may be as well to cite the
commencement of it at this place :

The writer is one of those persons who consider it highly
probable that Shakespeare was at first a mere pen-name of
Bacon's, and regard Shakspere, Shaxper, or Shayksper —
easily mistaken for Shakespeare — as the usual patronymic
from birth to death of an illiterate actor : he thinks, moreover,
that there must have been some sort of understanding between
the poet and the actor (resembling perhaps that between
Aristophanes and the actor Callistratus), and conjectures that
it may have covered proprietary rights or shares in theatrical
ventures.

When and how I came by such views can be of little or no
interest to anyone but myself. To prevent misconception,
however, it may be well to explain that my conversion dates
from 1884-5. An essay of mine (Shakespeare-Bacon, Sonnen-
schein, 1900)1 belonging in substance to 1885, would have
been published long before the date of actual publication but
for the appearance of a portent called the Great Cryptogram,
which put me out of love with the subject. My earliest
suspicions were suggested not by heretics — Mr. W. H. Smith,
Lord Campbell, Lord Penzance, and the rest — whose opinions
were absolutely unknown to me, but, if memory serve, by Mr.
Halliwell-Phillipps and the New Shakspere Society (of which
I must have been an early member). Since 1885, I have tried
to keep in touch with what orthodoxy has had to say for itself,
and against us. Some of our opponents regard Ben Jonson as
their prophet. To him they fly for counsel and comfort. They
throw his sayings at our heads whenever they get a chance.
In the index to Mr. Lang's Shakespeare-Bacon and the Great
Unknown (1912) Ben Jonson's name takes up more space than
even Shakespeare's. According to Mr. Lang " it is easy to
prove that Will (i.e. the Stratford man) was recognised as the
author by Ben Jonson." If this were true there would be
no Shakespeare question at all, none at least so far as I am
concerned. But it is not true. Ben Jonson — whose Works
ought to be familiar to all students of Shakespeare — is in fact
what lawyers would call a difficult witness, and to assert that
he is on the side of orthodoxy is simply to beg the question.?

* This Masque, also called " The Prince's Masque," forms the
subject of two chapters (VI and VII) in Mr. Smithson's book, Shake
speare — Bacon .

fThe title-page bears date 1899. [G. G.]

1 1 may be allowed to refer to my booklet, Ben Jonson and Shakespeare
(Cecil Palmer, 1921). [G. G.]

INTRODUCTORY

Some of Mr. Lang's admirers will have it that he has crushed
Mr. G. G. Greenwood much as a motor-car might crumple
up a bicycle. But a reading of Mr. Lang's book leaves me in
doubt whether Mr. Greenwood's main contentions (The
Shakespeare Problem Restated) are anywhere shaken, and I
am not likely to be very strongly biassed in Mr. Greenwood's
favour, seeing that he ostentatiously disclaims being a Baconian.
Mr. Greenwood indeed may be said to have quitted Stratford
for good and travelled a great many miles. Where he pulls
up it is not easy to say, but he does pull up somewhere — perhaps
where the rainbow ends. Mr. Lang, though he refrains from
imputing imbecility to Mr. Greenwood, is apparently unable
to be quite so lenient to Baconians. He explains, or would
like to explain, the Baconian views of Lord Penzance and Judge
Webb as partly due to senile decay. How he accounts for the
views of Lord Campbell,* Mr. George Bidder, Q.C., and others
of less note does not appear. When an unfamiliar theory
happens to be at grips with a popular one, the habit of thinking
and calling an opponent infatuated or not more than half mad
is easily caught. Bacon did not escape it, but he took care to
give it a turn which saved it from mere brutalite. In his day
two notable theories were at loggerheads, the Ptolemaic and
the Copernican, with Galileo for the Copernican Achilles.
Convinced that the Sun moved round the Earth, Bacon smiled
at his opponents for doubting the immovability of our planet
and dubbed them " car-men," " terrae aurigas," chauffeurs, in
other words. No other student of The Advancement of Learning
(1605), written be it remembered when Bacon was fully mature,
will be surprised at this. Bacon avowedly took " all knowledge
for his province," and The Advancement is a comprehensible
survey of that province — as Bacon understood it. Of mathe
matics he probably knew little or nothing. It is an open question
whether Induction owes anything to the Novnm Organum. His
acquaintance with the phenomena of nature (as distinct from
human nature) was derived for the most part from poets and
men of letters. More significant still, his splendid natural
gifts were not adapted to scientific research. His true province
in short was literature, above all, poetry. And here it may
not be amiss to note (i) that John Dryden's appreciation of
Shakespeare — in whom, says J. D., are to be found " all arts
and sciences, all moral and natural philosophy " — coincides
as closely as may be with the traditional estimate of Bacon,
and (2) that Shakespeare seems to have been of one mind with
Bacon upon the motion of the Sun round the Earth.

With the tons of printed matter on the Baconian side, my

* But Lord Campbell cannot be quoted as a ' Baconian." [G. G.]

BACONIAN ESSAYS

acquaintance has always been of the smallest. In a recent
pamphlet by Sir E. Burning Lawrence, that gentleman with
the aid of a newspaper called The Tailor and Cutter labours
the point, already sufficiently obvious, that the figure which
does duty as frontispiece to the first folio of Shakespeare must
have been meant for a caricature.

What the Shakespeare theory is needs no telling. It is
developed in Biographies, Lives, and so forth, within the reach
of every one.

The Bacon theory on the other hand is still in the rough.
;< You may well say that," an opponent exclaims. " You,
Baconians, differ among yourselves almost as widely as you
differ from us. With some of you it is an article of faith that
Bacon looked for fame (poetical) to after ages, and took unheard-of
pains to secure it. Baconians who hunt for ciphers, key-numbers
and so forth, not only in books, but even under the river Wye
belong to this class. You on the contrary have convinced
yourself, I know not how, that Bacon intended his secret to
die with him. What are we to do ? How can we help thinking
that there is no such thing as a passably authentic Baconian
theory ? " My acquaintance with Baconians, I reply, is far
too limited to justify any important attempt at sketching an
authoritative theory. My object is less ambitious. It is to
set down, as briefly and simply as possible, by way of intro
duction to Ben Jonson, certain probable constituents of a
reasonable Baconian theory.

(a) Shakespeare was a pseudonym adopted by Bacon to mask
his personality whenever he created or " made" for the stage.

(b) The date at which Bacon gave up writing for public
theatres coincided pretty nearly with the beginning of his rise
to high place in the State.

(c) By the year 1623 (if not earlier) Bacon's friends and admirers
must have become very uneasy about the fate of his still unpub
lished plays. These plays had long been hidden away from
the public eye. What if the veil should never be lifted ? Lest
that should happen, publication, and the sooner the better,
must have been eagerly desired by all lovers of literature. The
conditions were not unpromising. Softened by misfortune,
Bacon would be open to entreaty, and publication just then
would put it in the power of influential friends to minister
with perfect delicacy to the more urgent needs of the fallen
man, " old, weak, ruined, in want, a very subject of pity."
Provided that his true name could be for ever kept from contact
with the " family " of her who had once been his " mistress,"*

*See Jonson's censure of Poetry in his day, for being " a meane Mis-
tresse to such as have wholly addicted themselves to her ; or given their

INTRODUCTORY

his consent or rather acquiescence might be hoped for. Values
it is true, literary and poetical values especially, were no longer
what they had been in the days of the late Queen. But a parent's
affection for the offspring of his brain is never perhaps wholly
uprooted. Even so, the task was one for a master of literary
craft. But the thing had to be done and that quickly, if it was
to be of any use to the great man who, to quote Jonson's
Discoveries j had " filled up all numbers, and performed that
in our tongue which may be compar'd or preferr'd either to
insolent Greece or haughty Rome." No considerable help
was to be looked for from Bacon himself. The lie downright
was to be avoided if possible ; but the motive being perfectly
clean, economy of truth and suggestion of untruth were neither
of them barred. The pseudonym was ready to hand, and the
players Heminge and Condell were not likely to deny their
names to any prefatory matter whatever which the editor might
think fit to invent.

(d) Among the notable persons who openly interested them
selves in the publication of the First Folio were the Earl of
Pembroke, the Earl of Montgomery, and Ben Jonson. But it
is safe to say that they were not the only promoters of the under
taking, and in my opinion King James (himself a poet in days
gone by), Prince Charles, and some alter ego of Bacon's (possibly
Sir T. Mathews) were of the number.

(e) A private printing press may have been among the tools
habitually employed by the author. Heminge and Condell
in the First Folio are made to say : " We have scarce received
from him (Shakespeare) a blot in his papers." As an allusion
to the use of a press this statement would pass muster.* It
occurs in the prefatory matter, thoroughly Jonsonian, which
seems to have served as receptacle for what he preferred to
put upon other shoulders than his own.

(/) As for Shakspere — the man who emerged from and
returned to Stratford somehow and somewhen — he while he
lived was a nobody outside Stratford, and by the year 1622
must have been almost forgotten even there, except as a good

names up to her family. They who have but saluted her on the by . .
she hath done much for, and advanced in the way of their own pro
fessions, both the Law and the Gospel, beyond all they could have hoped
without her favour." This means, I take it, that Jonson had in his eye
Bacon and others as striking examples of Poetry's generosity, and him
self a shining illustration of her meanness. As for the prosperous
burgher of Stratford, he was not in the picture, for Jonson was treating
of poets. [Original Note.]

* But surely this statement, put into the mouths of the players by
the author of the Folio preface, could not have referred to printed matter?
If the players did indeed, receive papers with " scarce a blot " they
were, doubtless, fair copies. [G. G.]

BACONIAN ESSAYS

sort of fellow who, having made money in London, had invested
it in Stratford with a view to enjoying the congenial society of
its artless natives. His Apotheosis probably began with the
publication of Jonson's own Ode.

" Guesswork ! " exclaims one. " Mere figments of the brain !"
says another. Well, where is the theory which does not consist
of such material ? Take away from any orthodox life-story
of Shakspere all figments of somebody's brain, and what
remains ? According to Professor Saintsbury, " almost all
the received stuff of his life-story is shreds and patches of
tradition, if not positive dream-work."

Here it becomes necessary to say a word in explana
tion of the present work. The late Edward Smithson
left by his Will a sum of money to myself
and a friend who prefers to remain anonymous,
with the suggestion that it might be made
use of in the endeavour to ascertain — to use his
own words — " the true parentage of Shakespeare
(not Shakspere)," meaning thereby, as there can
be no doubt, that such sum might be employed,
if thought well — for there was no definite trust
attached to it — in furtherance of the quest of
the true " Shakespeare," whether he might be found
in Francis Bacon (as he himself thought was the
case) or in some other writer of the period in
question. Moreover, he had left in type certain
" Baconian " essays, which, although he gave no
specific directions to that effect, it was known that
he desired to be published as his last words on a
matter in which he was so deeply interested, and
these, at the request of his wife who survives him,
I have supervised and prepared for publication.
Here a difficulty presented itself. Some of these
essays deal, to a certain extent, with the same subject
matter, and, consequently, the reader will find in
them a certain amount of repetition. At first I

INTRODUCTORY

thought it might be possible to avoid this by collating
the various manuscripts, and fusing them together,
as it were, into one volume. It soon became ap
parent, however, that such " fusion " would lead
to " confusion/' and would be detrimental to Mr.
Smithson's work. I trust, therefore, that the
recurrence of various arguments, or sentiments, in
the following essays, will meet with generous tolera
tion on the part of the reader. After all, a certain
amount of repetition is, sometimes, likely to do more
good than harm. The famous Mr. Justice Maule,
while still at the Bar, was once arguing a case before
three Judges, one of whom, finding the distinguished
counsel somewhat prolix on this occasion, and
inclined to repeat his arguments, exclaimed testily :
" Really, Mr. Maule, that is the third time you
have made that observation ! " " Well," replied
Maule, quite imperturbably, " there are three of
your Lordships ! " To repeat an argument once
for each Judge on the Bench was, then, in this great
advocate's opinion, quite a right, proper, and useful
thing to do. I am in hopes, therefore, that there
may be the same justification for a considerable
amount of repetition in the case now presented to a
court — that of the reading public— which, it is
hoped, may consist of many more Judges than those
addressed by Mr. Justice Maule.

I would make this further observation with regard
to Edward Smithson's Essays, though perhaps it
is hardly necessary to make it. Although it has
been a pleasure to me to edit them, so far as they
required editing at all, I have, of course, no
responsibility for the arguments or the opinions

BACONIAN ESSAYS

expressed in them. Mr. Smithson, in the passage
I have quoted above from his article in The Nine-
teenth Century, says that I " ostentatiously disclaim
being a Baconian." I am sorry if that disclaimer
was made " ostentatiously," but speaking now,
after the lapse of many years, and I trust without a
shred of " ostentation " — which, certainly, would
be very much out of place — I must say that I am
still unwilling to label myself as a " Baconian."
It was, I think, Professor Huxley who said that, if
asked whether he believed that there were in
habitants in Mars, his reply would be that he
neither believed nor disbelieved. He did not
know. This is the " agnostic " position in which
I find myself with regard to the hypothesis that
Bacon is the true Shakespeare. I really do not
know. Nevertheless, an astronomer who had
adopted Professor Huxley's position concerning
the possible existence of inhabitants in Mars, might
without prejudice to that agnostic position, find
himself impelled to set forth certain arguments
which seemed to him to tell in favour of such a
possibility. In the same way it occurred to me
some years ago to write certain essays on the
Baconian side of the case, two of which I now
venture to publish as a sequel to those of Mr.
Smithson 's authorship. I recognise that there is
much that may quite fairly and reasonably be urged
in favour of the Baconian case. Merely to ridicule
that case appears to me to be indicative of folly
rather than wisdom on the part of those who adopt
such an attitude. Nevertheless, when all is said
and done, I am far from thinking that the Baconian

INTRODUCTORY

authorship of any of the plays or poems published
in the name of " Shakespeare " has been actually
proved. That Francis Bacon had, at any rate,
something to do with the production of some of
these plays and poems is, at least, a very plausible
hypothesis. As Professor Lefranc writes, " Que
1'auteur du theatre Shakespearien ait ete en rapport
avec Francis Bacon, c'est ce que nous avons toujours
ete porte a admettre pour bien des raisons,"* and
in support of that hypothesis I may be said to hold a
brief pro hdc vice in the two " Baconian "
Essays which I now venture to publish. But
that is all. I endeavour to keep an open
mind upon this, as upon many other doubtful
questions. Professor Lefranc himself has shown,
with great learning and conspicuous ability, that
a strong case can be made in favour of William
Stanley, Sixth Earl of Derby, as the author of some,
at any rate, of the " Shakespearean " plays, and more
especially of that extraordinary play Love's Labour's
Lost."\ But the constructive side of the" Shakespeare
Problem " I must be content to leave to younger and
abler men, and such as have much more time to
devote to it than I have. With regard, however, to
:< the man from Stratford," as Mr. Henry James
styles him, or the " Stratford rustic," as Messrs.
Garnett and Gosse do not hesitate to characterize
him, his supposed authorship may, and, indeed,
must be, set aside as one of the greatest and most
unfortunate of the many delusions which have, from

* See Sous le Masque de Shakespeare. Vol. I, p. 130.

t As for the claims of Edward de Vere, lyth Earl of Oxford, see
"Shakespeare " Identified,by J. ThomasLooney (Cecil Palmer, 1920).

c 33

BACONIAN ESSAYS

time to time, imposed themselves upon a credulous
and " patient world."*

I cannot conclude this note without a brief
reference to two articles which have lately appeared
in the Quarterly Review (October, 1921, and January,
1922), under the heading of " Recent Shakespearean
Research," by Mr. C. R. Haines. I can find little
or nothing that can be recalled " recent " in them
unless we give a quite unwonted extension to the
meaning of that word. Mr. Haines even includes
such vieux jeu as the Plume MSS. in his " recent "
Shakespearean Research, but they certainly contain
some very remarkable statements. I will, however,
here content myself by quoting the following letter
which I sent to the Nation and Athenceum after
reading the first of these articles, and which
appeared in that paper on November 26th, last :

* With reference to the " Baconian " theory I must here quote words
recently written by one who bears a highly distinguished name in the
ranks of literature. Mr. George Moore, writing in reply to a criticism
by Mr. Gosse, published in the Sunday Times, thus expresses his opinion
upon that question : " Some of Shakespeare's finest plays were not only
revised, but remoulded ; ' Hamlet ' is one of these, and it is not an
exaggeration to say that its revisions were spread over at least twenty
years ; and I thought when I wrote the little booklet, * Fragments from
Heloise and Abelard,' that the text of ' Othello ' in the Folio contained
1 60 lines that are not to be found in the quarto, and I think so still ; 160
lines were added between the publication of the quarto [in 1622] and the
folio [1623], and these lines cannot be attributed to any other hand but
the author's ; they are among the best in the play, and among them
will be found lines dear to all who hold the belief that Bacon and not the
mummer was the author of the plays :

Like the Pontic Sea

Whose icy current and compulsive course
Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on
To the Propontic and the Helespont."

See the Sunday Times, August 28, 1921. With reference to the 160
new lines added in the folio version of Othello and which " cannot be
attributed to any other hand but the author's," it will be remembered
that William Shakspere of Stratford died some six years before the
publication of the quarto of 1622. (See Is there a Shakespeare Problem ?
p. 443 et seq.)

INTRODUCTORY

" RECENT SHAKESPEAREAN RESEARCH."

SIR, — In an article under the above heading in
the October number of the Quarterly Review ,
Mr. C. R. Haines writes (p. 229) : " There cannot be
the smallest doubt that Shakespeare [i.e., William
Shakspere, of Stratford] was possessed of books at
his death. One of these, with his undoubted signature
[my italics], ' W. Shr.' is still extant in the Bodleian
Library. ... A second, Florio's version of Mon
taigne (1603), bears the signature ' Wilm Shakspere,'
which is with some reason regarded as genuine. "

Now Sir Edward Maunde Thompson, who, I
believe, is generally considered our foremost
" paleographer,'' has told us that the " Florio's
Montaigne " signature is an " undoubted forgery '
(I have in my possession a letter of his addressed
from the British Museum in 1904 to the late Sir
Herbert Tree, and kindly forwarded by the latter
to me, in which Sir Edward so states) ; and the
same high authority writes in " Shakespeare's
England " (Vol. I, p. 308, n.) : " Nor is it possible
to give a higher character to the signature, ' Wm
ShV (not ' W. Shr,' as Mr. Haines prints it) in
the Aldine Ovid's * Metamorphoses,' 1502, in the
Bodleian Library."

How in the face of this Mr. C. R. Haines can
assert that the book referred to, in the Bodleian
Library, bears Shakespeare's " undoubted signature,"
or that the " Florio" signature is with reason regarded
as genuine, I am quite unable to understand.

A further question is suggested by the following
passage in Mr. Haines 's article. Alluding to the

BACONIAN ESSAYS

suit of " Belott v. Mountjoy/' he writes : " From
this suit we also learn an interesting by-fact, namely,
that Belott and his wife, after quitting the Mount-
joys, lived in the house of George Wilkins, the
playwright, who had the honour of collaborating
with Shakespeare in ' Pericles/ and possibly in
'Timon.'3 Here I would ask what particle of
evidence is there that the " George Wilkins,
Victualler/' mentioned in the action, was George
Wilkins the pamphleteer and hack-dramatist ? It
is true Professor Wallace has told us that, although
!< we have known nothing about Wilkins personally
before/' he thinks that " more than one reader with
a livelier critical interest in these [Shakespearean]
plays may be able to smell the victualler " (Harper's
Magazine, March, 1910, p. 509) ; but, really, we
can hardly be expected to put implicit confidence in
the deductions of Dr. Wallace's olfactory organ.
What warrant, then, has Mr. Haines to characterize
as a " fact " that which is only guess-work and
assumption ? For my part, I can no more " smell
the victualler " in the author of " The Miseries of
Inforst Marriage " than I can " smell " (as did
Professor Wallace) the French official Herald in
Mountjoy of Muggle Street !

One more question and I have done, though many
more occur to me. Mr. Haines invites our attention
to " The Plume MSS., which gave us the only
glimpse of John Shakespeare at his home, cracking
jests with his famous son " (p. 241). May I respect
fully ask him if it is not the fact that this pleasant
picture of John Shakespeare rests upon the (alleged)
statement of Sir John Mennes, and that Sir John

INTRODUCTORY

Mennes was born on March ist, 1599, whereas John
Shakespeare died in September, 1601, so that the
infant Mennes must, presumably, have been taken
from his cradle in Kent, in his nurse's arms, for the
purpose of interviewing that " merry-cheeked old
man," of which interview he made a record from
memory when he had learnt to write ?

I trust Mr. Haines will enlighten a perplexed
inquirer as to these matters in the second article,
which, as I gather, he is to contribute to the
Quarterly Review on the results of " Recent
Shakespearean Research.'' — Yours, &c.,

GEORGE GREENWOOD.

I turned, therefore, with some interest to Mr.
Haines 's second article, but, alas, I found no
enlightenment therein. He has treated my
questions with a very discreet silence. Well,
no doubt " silence is golden " — in some cases.
But such is " Shakespearean " criticism at the
present day, of which these articles are a very
instructive and characteristic specimen. I am
aware, of course, that if I were to offer a paper in
reply to them, however conclusive that reply might
be, and even if it were quite up to the literary
standard of the Review in question, it would be
at once returned to me by the editor — if not con
signed to the " W.P.B."— for the all-sufficient
reason that the writer is guilty of vile and intolerable
heresy (to wit that he shares the conviction of the
late Henry James — and many others alive and
dead — that the author of Hamlet and Lear and
Othello was actually a well-educated man, of high

BACONIAN ESSAYS

position, and the representative of the highest
culture of his day), and is therefore taboo to the
editors of all decent journals . Id sane intolerandum !
Indeed, with the exception of the editor of the
National Review — to whom the thanks of all un
prejudiced and liberal-minded men are most justly
due — I know of no editor of an English quarterly
or monthly magazine, since the lamented death of
Mr. Wray Skilbeck, who does not maintain this
boycott as though it were a matter of moral obligation,
just as but a few years since they boycotted the Free
thinker and the Rationalist. They freely open their
columns to attacks upon the " Anti-Stratfordian,"
but oh no account must he be allowed to reply.

Whether such an attitude redounds to the credit
of English literature it is not for me, a " heretic, "
to say. I would only venture to refer the reader to
the observations of Professor Abel Lefranc — a
scholar and critic of European reputation — upon
this matter, in whose judgment it seems that such
an attitude with regard to an extremely interesting
literary problem is not only absurdly prejudiced
and narrow-minded, but one which — I tremble
as I say it — makes some of our literary highbrows
not a little ridiculous in the eyes of men of common
sense and unfettered judgment.* G. G.

* In the Fortnightly Review of January, 1922, Mr. W. Bayley
Kempling gravely informs us that Shakespeare bestowed the name of
" Mountjoy " on the French Herald in Henry V . in honour of the
" tire-maker " of that name with whom player Shakespeare lodged for
a time in Mfgwell (i.e., Monkwell) Street, thereby repeating the
preposterous error of Dr. Wallace (often exposed by the present writer
amongst others) who wrote in ignorance of the fact that " Mountjoy
King at Arms " was the official name of a French Herald who, as
Holinshed informs us, made his appearance at Agincourt ! Had Mr.
Kempling condescended to read an " heretical " author he might have
been saved from this absurd mistake.

THE MASQUE OF "TIME
VINDICATED"

THE MASQUE OF "TIME
VINDICATED" *

The following extract from Mr. Smithson's
Article in The Nineteenth Century of November
1913, headed " Ben Jonson's Pious Fraud," may
well stand as a preface to his now published Essay
on Jonson's Masque of Time Vindicated, which
was written by him in the year 1919. The reader
may also be referred to Chapters VI and VII of his
Shakespeare-Bacon, published in 1899.

It is odd that we Baconians, differing as we do from our
opponents in so many points, should agree with them so entirely
on one — the supreme importance of the testimony of Ben
Jonson. This paper is mainly concerned with two of his
utterances, the Ode in the First Folio, and the Prince's Masque.
Both the one and the other belong in point of composition
to the same period, 1622-3. We will begin with the Masque
completed no doubt a few months earlier than the Ode. In
my opinion they were vital parts of one great scheme of which
Bacon, i.e., Bacon-Shakespeare, was the subject.

The genesis of the Prince's Masque was probably on this
wise : assuming that Bacon was bent on disowning his plays,
the publication of them, however generous in intention, could
at best be only a left-handed compliment to him. Consequently
if the scheme was to yield any true satisfaction to its originators
(or any suitable consolation to Bacon regarded as the victim
of malicious if not disloyal persecution), it would have to give
scope for some direct (ad inrum) expression, in their own persons

* This Essay was written by Mr. Smithson in 1919-20.

BACONIAN ESSAYS

if possible, of love and admiration for their hero. A prince
brought up in the court of James the First would be sure to
decide that a Masque was the thing and Ben Jonson the man.
As the audience would necessarily be select and discreet (Court
influence being potent), the risk of disclosure was not serious ;
and even if it had been, Jonson's skill would have been equal
to the task of hoodwinking any probable audience. On this
occasion luck helped cunning. In the nick of time, George
Wither, a " prodigious pourer forth of rhime," happened to
publish a volume of Satirical Essays in rhyme, with a ridiculous
dedication of the thing to himself as patron and protector.
This I fancy gave Jonson just what he wanted — a red herring
to draw across the scent.

The Prince's Masque had another, and for our purpose far
more significant title — Time Vindicated to Himself and His
Honours. Time, no Time of long ago, but the age that was
then passing, had been slandered, taxed with being mean and
dull and sterile, and the intention of the Masque or Pageant
was to refute these calumnies in presence, not of an inquisitive
world, but of Time's living ornaments (as well as himself).
If report speak true, it was presented on the iQth of January,
1623 — the Sunday in that memorable year which fell nearest
to Bacon's birthday — presented in circumstances of unpre
cedented splendour, " the Prince leading the Measures with
the French embassador's wife." The Masque (as given in
Jonson's Works) is sub-divided into Antimasque and Masque
proper.

Fame, the accredited mouthpiece of the author, is by far
the most important personage in the Antimasque. Her first
business is to proclaim that she has been sent to invite to that
night's " great spectacle," not the many, but the few who alone
were worthy to view it. An inquisitive mob nicknamed The
Curious at once begins to heckle Fame. A thrasonical personage
called Chronomastix, a caricature compounded in unequal
proportions of George Wither and the Ovid Junior of Jonson's
Poetaster, then appears on the scene. Chronomastix, I may
say in passing, seems to have deluded John Chamberlain, for
he (J. C.)tells a correspondent that Jonson in the Prince's Masque
" runs a risk by impersonating George Withers as a whipper
of the times, which is a dangerous jest." At sight of
Chronomastix The Curious jeer at Fame for not recognising
their idol, while Chronomastix himself has the effrontery to
call her his "mistress," and tells her it is for her sake alone that
he "revells so in rime." Fame retorts (in effect) : *' Away thou
wretched Impostor ! My proclamation was not meant for
thee or thy kind ; goe revell with thine ignorant admirers.

'TIME VINDICATED"

Let worthy names alone." Chronomastix is furious, brags of
his popularity, and appeals to The Curious to " come forth . . .
and now or never, spight of Fame, approve me." The stage
direction here runs : "At this, the Mutes come in." The first
Mute, an elephantine creature, meant of course for Jonson
himself, is about to bring forth a " male-Poem . . . that
kicks at Time already." (Jonson's Ode to Shakespeare was
probably ruminated, if not written, at the very time that this
"male-Poem" was struggling to be born.) The second Mute,
a quondam Justice — reminding one of Justice Clement in
Jonson's earliest comedy — is in the habit of canning Chrono
mastix about " in his pocket " and crying "'O happy man ! ' to
the wrong party, meaning the Poet, where he meant the subject."
(This I take for a hint at the confusion of mind that must have
existed among lovers of the drama as to who Shakespeare really
was.) The succeeding pair of Mutes are, the one a printer
in disguise who conceals himself and " his presse in a hollow
tree, and workes by glow-worm light, the moon's too open " ;
the other a compositor who in "an angle inhabited by ants
will sit curled whole days and nights, and work his eyes out
for him."* The fifth Mute is a learned man, a schoolmaster,
who is turning the works of the caricature Chronomastix into
Latine. ("Some good pens" — as we learn from his letters —
were at this time engaged in turning Bacon's Advancement
of Learning into Latin, the " general language.") The sixth
and last Mute is a " Man of warre," reminiscent of Gullio in
the Return from Parnassus, who it may be remembered worships
" sweet Mr. Shakspeare," talks " nothing but Shakspeare,"
etc. Not one of the Mutes ever opens his mouth, and all that
the audience knows of them is told by The Curious, whose
function is to connect the Antimasque with the Masque and
act as nomenclators for the elephantine poet and his suite.
The Mutes came, or seemed to come, at the bidding of Chrono
mastix, in order to snub Fame for having insulted him. But
Chronomastix himself is the person actually snubbed by them,
seeing that they ignore him utterly. As for Fame, she treats
the Mutes very coolly, her only comment being " What a
confederacy of Folly is here ! "

Following hard on this observation (of Fame's) comes a
dance, in which The Curious adore Chronomastix and then
carry him off in triumph. Afterwards The Curious come up
again, and one of them, addressing Fame, asks : " Now, Fame,
how like you this ? " Another chimes in : " He scornes you,

* The words of the original are .

" Who in an angle, where the ants inhabit,
(The emblems of his labours) will sit curl'd," etc. [Ed.]
43

BACONIAN ESSAYS

and defies you, has got a Fame of his owne, as well as a Faction."
A third adds : " And these will deify him, to despite you."
Fame answers : "I en vie not the Apotheosis. 'Twill prove
but deifying of a Pompion." (If The Curious had scented
what Fame was about, a retort like this would have been enough
to let them into the secret. But this hint, as well as her previous
taunt, " My hot inquisitors, what I am about is more than
you understand," was lost on them and they continue their
futile cackle.) Fame gets rid of The Curious at last by means
of the Cat and Fiddle, who, according to the stage direction,
" make sport with and drive them away."

Relieved of the presence of all who were unfit to view the
"great Spectacle" now on the point of being exhibited "with all
solemnity," Fame at last lets herself go : 4< Commonly (says
she) The Curious are ill-natured and, like flies, seek Time's
corrupted parts to blow upon, but may the sound ones live
with fame and honour, free from the molestation of these
insects."

The stage direction here runs : " Loud musique. To
which the whole scene opens, where Saturne sitting with Venus
is discovered above, and certaine Votaries coming forth below,
which are the Chorus."

Addressing the King, Fame announces that Saturn (Time)
urged by Venus (emblem of affection) had promised to set
free "certaine glories of the Time," which, though eminently
fitted to "adorn that age," had nevertheless for mysterious
reasons been kept in "darknesse" by "Hecate (Queene of
shades)." Venus puts in her word ; assures Time that the
liberation of the " glories " is a " worke (which) will prove his
honour " as well as exceed " men's hopes." Saturn answers
her gallantly and then addressing the Votaries says : " You
shall not long expect : with ease the things come forth (that)
are born to please. Looke, have you scene such lights as
these ? "

This is the very climax of the Masque. " The Masquers
(so runs the stage direction) are discovered and that which
obscured them vanisheth." The Votaries exclaim with rapture :
;' These, these must sure some wonders be. . . . What grief,
or envie had it beene, that these and such had not beene scene,
but still obscured in shade ! Who are the glories of the Time
. . . and for the light were made ! "

(Who were these " glories " whom Fame, the Prince, Ben
Jonson, and the rest had with difficulty rescued from the under
world, in whose behalf inquisitive intruders had been excluded,
about whom absurd mistakes of identity had been made, and
who according to Fame were destined to play parts in the

" TIME VINDICATED "

" apotheosis " of a pumpkin ?* The only answer that occurs
to me is that the spectacle consisted essentially of a selection
from among the dramatis persona who were about to figure
in the First Folio, especially characters out of the sixteen or
twenty then unpublished plays.)

The Masque ends with an exhortation to charity, the final
words being :

Man should not hunt mankind to death,

But strike the enemies of man.
Kill vices if you can :

They are your wildest beasts :
And when they thickest fall, you make the Gods true feasts.

(Bearing in mind that Bacon was probably regarded by the
audience as an ill-used man, this exhortation sorts well with
what I take to be the true interpretation of the Masque. So
does the motto with which it opens. In that motto Martial
bids ill-natured censors to leave him alone and keep their venom
for self-admirers, persons vain of their own achievements.
From first to last, therefore, Time Vindicated seems to have
been deliberately adjusted to Bacon.)

The second part of this quasi-national scheme for doing
honour to Shakespeare-Bacon falls now to be considered. The
First Folio was published, it would seem, towards the end of
1623. Though not entered on the Stationers' Register till
November, it may well have been on the stocks before
that, for the difficulties of collecting, arranging with interested
printers, editing, adapting (The Tempest for example), and so
forth, must have been extraordinary. The volume is introduced
by some doggerel, signed " B. I.," which tells the reader :

This figure that thou here seest put,
It was for gentle Shakespeare cut ;
Wherein, etc.

Derision and mystification, twin motives or causes of the
guy Chronomastix, are equally the motives of this grotesque
" figure." Whether this were also intended to parody the
doggerel inscribed on Shakespeare's gravestone in Stratford
Church may be open to doubt. That inscription runs :

Good frend, for Jesus sake forbeare
To digge the dust encloased heare ;
Bleste be the man, etc.

* But it was not " these ' glories '," but the Faction of Chronomastix ,
and the " Fame of his own," who, according to the real Fame, were
destined to " deify a Pompion." The suggestion which follows that
the " glories " were " a selection from among the dramatis persona
who were about to figure in the First Folio " is an hypothesis which
will not, I fear, meet with general acceptance even among " Baconians."
[ED.]

BACONIAN ESSAYS

Warned by " B. I." that laughter is in that air, we turn to
the famous Ode itself which is signed " Ben : lonson " (not
" B. I.") This Poem opens with a significant hint that the
" name " Shakespeare, as distinct from his " book " and his
"fame," was a delicate subject to handle. After having assured
himself with much ado that Shakespeare's (true) name is now
in no danger, Jonson proceeds to inform him that he (Shakes-
speare) is alive still, " a moniment without a tombe." Then
comes the line : " And though thou hadst small Latin and
less Greek," which is generally mistaken for a categorical state
ment that Shakespeare lacked Latin, whereas it should be
understood as equivalent to " Supposing thou hadst small Latin,"
etc. The word" would " in the next sentence (" From thence
to honour thee I would not seek ") shows this to be the reading.

Then come the triumphant verses in which, after having
challenged " insolent Greece or haughtie Rome " to produce
a greater than Shakespeare, Jonson exclaims :

Triumph my Britaine, thou hast one to showe,
To whom all Scenes of Europe homage owe.
He was not of an age, but for all time !
And all the Muses still were in their prime,
When like Apollo he came forth, etc.

(Compare this with what Jonson wrote of Bacon not many
years later : Bacon " is he, who hath filled up all numbers ;
and performed that in our tongue, which may be compared
or preferred, either to insolent Greece or haughty Rome. In
short, within his view and about his times were all the wits
born that could honour a language, or helpe study. Now
things daily fall, wits grow downe-ward, and Eloquence growes
back-ward. So that hee may be named, and stand as the marke
and akme of our language. . . . Hee seemed to mee ever,
by his worke, one of the greatest men, and most worthy of
admiration that had beene in many Ages." The similarity
between the two eulogies strikes one the moment they are
brought into juxtaposition, and this helps to explain the exclusion
of the Ode from the collected Workes of Ben : Jonson : 1640-1.)

After this rapturous outburst the mood changes, and we
are bored by a number of didactic lines about the need of toil
and sweat as well as genius, " for the good poet's made as well
as born." The passage is one among many symptoms of
Jonson 's long-standing quarrel with Shakespeareolators — a
quarrel which at a later date found expression in the
Discoveries — for refusing to see that the carelessness of their
idol was at times not less conspicuous than his genius. Satisfied
with having vindicated his own consistency, Jonson goes on

'TIME VINDICATED"

to declare that each " well- torned and true-filed " line of Shake
speare's " seemes to shake a lance • as brandished at the eyes
of ignorance." (Obviously, therefore, Jonson had in view a
peculiar kind of ignorance, one which the mere technique
displayed in the First Folio would, but for a misunderstanding,
have put to flight. The quondam Justice of Time Vindicated who
was wont to cry " O happy man ! to the wrong party/' suggests
the misunderstanding in question. What, moreover, are we to
make of the " stage" shaking and " lance " shaking and brandish
ing ? How reconcile this punning upon shake and spear with
the opening lines of the Ode which breathe forth reverence
for " thy name." It had been difficult, short of direct statement,
to give plainer indications that Jonson was out for a juggle
with a pair of names, one of them an alias.)

On the heels of the lance-brandishing jest comes the pas
sionate utterance : " Sweet Swan of Avon, what a sight it were
to see thee in our waters yet appeare, and make those flights
upon the bankes of Thames, that so did take Eliza and our
James ! " (Here suggestio falsi is carried to the verge of the lie.
What Jonson would have us think he felt about Warwick and
its Avon is one thing. What he actually thought may be
gathered from a fragment of rather later date in which he jeers
at " Warwick Muses " for choosing a " Hoby-horse " as their
favourite mount — " the Pegasus that uses to waite on Warwick
Muses," etc. Be this as it may, the ethics of the case would
cause him no uneasiness. A secret had to be kept in deference
to the wishes of one whom Jonson regarded as almost the greatest
and most admirable of men, one too whose right to an incognito
no living man of letters was likely to dispute.)

Jonson 's yearning to see Shakespeare once more " upon the
bankes of Thames" is suddenly arrested by a vision. Turning
his poetic eye upwards and catching sight of the constellation
Cygnus, he affects to be thrilled by the conceit that Shake
speare had been metamorphosed, " advanced "to a higher
sphere — " the hemisphere " as he calls it. (The Ode belongs,
as has been said, to 1622-23. Some ten or a dozen years earlier,
Shakspere, preferring humdrum Stratford to London and poetry,
had turned his back on the Capital. If this yearning had been
uttered in 1612-13, instead of 1622-23, ^ might have been
meant for the Stratford man. So with the vision and the thrill,
if we could have referred them to 1616-17, they would have
have provoked no question. But as things stand, question
is inevitable. Had the yearning been kept under since 1612,
and why ? The vision too and the thrill, what had they to do
with the testator of 1616 ? What more likely than that Jonson
had in his mind the social elevation of the wonderful man who

BACONIAN ESSAYS

long before 1623 had broken his magic wand, doffed his singing
robes, and taken leave of the stage for ever ?)
fj&The Ode closes on a note akin to despair at the low estate
of Poetry ever since Shakespeare had ceased to enrich and adorn
it. A similar note, it will be remembered, marks the close of
Jonson's appreciation of Bacon : " Now things daily fall :
wits grow downe-ward, and Eloquence growes back-ward "
etc. Here again the thoughts of Jonson were evidently running
on Shakespeare ; for with Jonson Eloquence was Poetry, or
rather — to speak by the book — Poetry was " the most prevailing
Eloquence, and of the most exalted Charact."

The contention of this article may be compressed into one
sentence : The Prince's Masque and the famous Ode to Shake
speare were a signal act of homage in two parts to one man,
and that man Francis Bacon. The proposition does not admit
of demonstrative proof. High probability is all that is claimed,
and if the claim be rejected the fault is with the advocate.

Such being the Preface, let us now turn to the
further Essay on the Masque of Time Vindicated,
which Edward Smithson left for, alas, posthumous
publication.

Proprietas denique ilia inseparabilis, quae Tempus
ipsum sequitur, ut veritatem indies parturiat. De
Aug: Scientiarum, 1623.

The year 1623 was a memorable one for literature.
First in order of date came a masterpiece of Ben
Jonson 's, the Masque of Time Vindicated. This
was followed by Bacon's De Augmentis Scientiarum,
an expanded version of his Advancement of Learning,
written many years earlier. The finest gift of that
year was the First Folio of Shakespeare.

Time Vindicated consists of two violently con
trasted parts ; jest and earnest, antimasque and
masque proper. The most conspicuous figure in
the farcical part is CHRONOMASTIX, an

"TIME VINDICATED"

enigmatical creature, so greedy of publicity (for
fame is denied him) that his only " end " is "to
get himselfe a name," to ingratiate himself with
" rumor " (he would have said Fame) as an
inspired poet or maker.* CHRONOMASTIX is escorted
by a doting mob of inquisitive adorers, the CURIOUS,
who are obsessed by the expectation that they are
about to assist at the deification of a great poet,
their own incomparable CHRONOMASTIX as they
fondly imagine. FAME, the mouthpiece of Jonson,
derides the CURIOUS at every turn, and when they
tell her that CHRONOMASTIX " has got a Fame of
his owne, as well as a Faction : and these will deifie
him, to despite you," FAME replies : " I envie not

* It might be well here to quote the original words. Chronomastix,
addressing Fame, delivers himself as follows :

"It is for you I revel so in rhyme,
Dear Mistress, not for hope I have, the Time
Will grow the better by it ; to serve Fame
Is all my end, and get myself a name."

To which Fame answers :

" Away, I know thee not, wretched impostor,

Creature of glory, mountebank of wit,

Self-loving braggart, Fame doth sound no trumpet

To such vain empty fools : 'tis Infamy

Thou serv'st, and follow'st, scorn of ail the Muses !

Go revel with thine ignorant admirers,

Let worthy names alone."

Whereupon Chronomastix makes an appeal to his " ignorant ad
mirers " :

" O you, the Curious,

Breathe you to see a passage so injurious,

Done with despight, and carried with such tumour

'Gainst me, that am so much the friend of rumour ?

I would say, Fame ?

Who with the lash of my immortal pen

Have scourg'd all sorts of vices and of men.

Am I rewarded thus ? have I, I say,

From Envy's self-torn praise and bays away,

With which my glorious front, and word at large,

Triumphs in print at my admirers' charge ?

Whereat " Ears," one of " The Curious," exclaims :

Rare ! how he talks in verse, just as he writes !

[Ed.]
D 49

BACONIAN ESSAYS

the Apotheosis. 'Twill prove but deifying of a
Pompion." The antimasque closes with the igno
minious expulsion of CHRONOMASTIX and his
votaries ; obviously because the " great spectacle/'
which Time intended that " night to exhibit with
all solemnity, " was too august for prying eyes to
see.

The Masque proper opens with an address to
King James, the gist of which is that " certaine
glories of the Time" till then artificially concealed,
were about to be freed " at Love's suit " or inter
cession because admirably fitted " to adorne the
age . ' ' The climax of the Masque follows this address
almost immediately. The stage direction runs :
' The Masquers are discovered, and that which
obscur'd them, vanisheth." The CHORUS of the
Masque is delighted by the vision of the Masquers,
and cries out : " What griefe, or envie had it beene,
that these, and such (as these) had not beene scene,
but still obscur'd in shade ! Who are the glories
of the Time, . . . and for the light were made ! "

The essential fiction of Time Vindicated, known
also as The Prince's Masque, is that Time had been
reproached with incapacity to produce masterpieces
comparable anyway with those of Greece and Rome ;
and that the revelation of these Masquers was a
triumphant refutation of the calumny. To suppose
that this result was achieved by the Prince and his
companions would be to insult Ben Jonson, the
Prince, and all concerned. The all-important
feature of the revelation must have been the make
up of the Masquers.

For several months previous to 1623 Jonson 's

" TIME VINDICATED fl

mind had necessarily been concentrated on Shake
speare ; collecting manuscripts ; squaring rival
publishers ; appreciating contributions offered by
admirers (Fletcher perhaps and Chapman among
others) ; amending originals, Julius Ccesar for
instance ; acting as editor-in-chief of the great
book ; meditating his Ode to " Shakespeare," the
man he lov'd and honoured (on this side idolatry) as
much as any. (See Discoveries, 1641, for this
italicised passage).

There are many and various indications to justify
the hypothesis that the Masque as a whole was a
tribute of love and admiration for " Shakespeare/'
Here are some of them, (i) Love is the incentive to
the freeing of the " wonders " — the " glories " — that
so charmed the CHORUS of the Masque. Love for
" Shakespeare " was probably Jonson 's leading
motive for undertaking all the drudgery connected
with the First Folio. (2) The mention of "envie"
by the CHORUS gives one to think. Deprecation of
envy is the burden of the enigmatical and portentous
exordium of Jonson's Ode to Shakespeare. (3)
For reasons unexplained by his accredited bio
graphers, the plays of Shakespeare had long been
held back or secluded, but were then on the eve of
publication or disclosure ; not indeed " cured and
perfect of their limbes " — to quote the editorial
figment in the First Folio — but certainly less
damaged, and imperfect than even Jonson, at an
earlier stage, can have expected. (4) The audience
of Time Vindicated is given to understand that
!< the Bosse of Belinsgate" a nickname for Jonson,
" has a male-/>o^7w in her belly now, big as a colt,

BACONIAN ESSAYS

that kicks at Time already." In my opinion this
Time-defying poem was none other than the famous
Ode to Shakespeare. These indications alone are
sufficient to justify the above-mentioned hypothesis
that the Masque as a whole was a tribute of love and
admiration for " Shakespeare." On no other hypo
thesis would the title, Time Vindicated, have been
appropriate or even excusable. Whereas no other
conceivable title would have been so absolutely
appropriate, if " Shakespeare " were, as I believe
he was, the hero of the Masque ; in precisely the
same sense, by the way, in which he was the hero
of the Ode; the only Poet worthy to be compared,
in the words of the Ode, with " all that insolent
Greece or haughtie Rome sent forth, or since did
from their ashes come."

Another significant feature of the Masque is the
display of anxiety to safeguard the spectacular
revelation of the Masquers from the attentions of
inquisitive observers, an anxiety which requires the
drastic expulsion of the CURIOUS. This anxiety,
as I read it, betokened a secret intimately connected
with the First Folio. Before developing this
contention, it may be well to clear the ground, not
only of Heminge and Condell, but also of the
Stratford gentleman's representatives. Heminge
and Condell were probably mere dummies who gave
Jonson carte blanche to say in their names anything
whether strictly true or not, which he thought
conducive to the end in view ; the prefatory
address ostensibly subscribed by them is too
Jonsonian to admit of any doubt on this score.
As for " Mr. Shakspere," he had long been dead

"TIME VINDICATED "

and buried, and his commonplace Will knows
nothing of plays, manuscripts, books, or anything
that matters. And as for his representatives —
had they been consulted at all — they would have
welcomed, rather than vetoed publicity.

The object of these precautions to secure secrecy
must have been a. persona grata to the King, Prince,
and Court ; this might go without saying. A
significant conjuration against hunting " Mankind
to death " suggests that he was also considered, by
the Prince among others, a victim of malicious per
secution. For other clues we have to go back to the
Antimasque. The CURIOUS have contrived to pick
up several very useful items of information about
the mysterious object in question. They know
for instance that he is or has been served by printers
and compositors so devoted to him, that they were
quite content to " worke eyes out for him," in dark
holes and corners, the better to " conceale " them.
They know too that a typical admirer of certain
" poems" which he was in the habit of carrying
about " in his pocket/' made the ridiculous
mistake of addressing his congratulations "to the
wrong party " : to CHRONOMASTIX, the " subject "
of the Antimasque, whom he mistook for the
"Poet" This blunder is crucial. The secret
so ostentatiously safeguarded was a secret of
pseudonymity. The Poet of the Masque (and of
our quest) — the very antithesis of the blatant
poetaster of the Antimasque — was a " maker " who
concealed his personality behind a pen-name.

The evidence that Francis Bacon was a " con
cealed " poet is incontestable. A private letter of

BACONIAN ESSAYS

his is conclusive, though Aubrey's corroborative
evidence is by no means negligible. Moreover,
Bacon, besides being a persona grata at Court, was
probably regarded by many notabilities not as a
criminal, but rather as a sufferer for the faults of
his day and generation. Ben Jonson's views may be
gathered from his Discoveries (1641) where he tells
that Bacon was " one of the greatest men . . .
that had beene in many Ages. . . . perform 'd
that in our tongue which may be compar'd or
preferr'd to, either insolent Greece or haughtie
Rome. ... So that hee may be nam'd and stand
as the marke and akme of our language. ... In
his adversity I ever prayed that God would give
him strength : for Greatnesse he could not want."
Francis Bacon then was the mysterious poet of
Time Vindicated. That Bacon was not the only
concealed poet of those days is probably true.
London might have teemed with concealed poets.
But the only concealed poet who satisfies the many
other conditions is Francis Bacon. Additional
evidence that we are on the right track is supplied
by the Antimasque. The " Nosed " ones among
the CURIOUS have smelt out apropos of CHRONO-
MASTIX that " a schoolmaster is turning all his
workes into Latin." Now it happens that about
1623 Bacon wrote to an intimate friend : u My
labours are most set to have those works . . .
Advancement of Learning . . . the Essays (etc),
well translated into Latin by the help of some good
pens that forsake me not." The Advancement of
Learning in Latin form, De Aug: Scientiarum,
appeared in 1623, dedicated to Prince Charles the

"TIME VINDICATED "

dedicatee of our Masque (and Camden, Jonson's
" reverend " master may have helped in the trans
lation — but this is mere conjecture).*

The figure CHRONOMASTIX is not easy to range or
class ; for he is not a caricature proper. He salutes
FAME with impudent assurance (in the Antimasque)
as his " Deare Mistris " and tells her that " he
re veils so in rime " for no other " end " than " to
serve Fame . . . and get himself e a name."
FAME, here as elsewhere, the mouthpiece of Jonson,
browbeats the blatant creature : " Away, I know
thee not, wretched Impostor, Creatire of glory,
Mountebanke of witte, selfe-loving Braggart, . . .
Scorne of all the Muses, goe re veil with thine
ignorant admirers, let worthy names alone." A
little abashed by this rebuff, CHRONOMASTIX appeals
to the CURIOUS for sympathy ; tells them that his
" glorious front and word at large triumphs in print
at my admirers charge " ; and finishes his harangue
by this invitation to his friends and admirers : " Come
forth that love me, and now or never, spight
of Fame, approve me." CHRONOMASTIX therefore
whatever he be, is the very antithesis of a self-
effacing poet or maker. He belongs I think to the

* In Mr. Smithson's Shakespeare-Bacon, at p. 124, we read : " A
schoolmaster, for example, is engaged in turning 'all his (Chronomastix's)
workes ' from the insular ' English in which they were originally written
into the general or continental Latine.' " It is somewhat difficult
however, to find Bacon under the guise of Chronomastix.

Jonson's words are :

" There is a school-master
Is turning all his works too into Latin,
To pure Satyric Latin ; makes his boys
To learn him ; call's him the Times Juvenal ;
Hangs all his school with his sharp sentences ;
And o'er the execution place hath painted
Time whipt, for terror to the infantry."

This also appears to be an allusion to George Wither. [ED.]

BACONIAN ESSAYS

same genus as those fantastic portraits, Landru
chez hi, etc., lately exhibited in Piccadilly by the
National Portrait Society, partly to amuse the
public and partly to puzzle quidnuncs. He was
a freak in other words, and his function was to amuse
outsiders and put curiosity off the scent.

Turn we now from the figure CHRONOMASTIX,
to the " Figure " which mars the front page of the
First Folio : the sorry ;< Figure . . . wherein
the Graver had a strife with Nature to out-doo the
life " ; as " B. J." (Ben Jonson) significantly
informs " the Reader." " B. J.'s " innuendo does
not stop here ; he follows it up by explicitly warning
all readers to " looke not on " the " picture," but
on the " Booke." The warning seems almost
superfluous ; for the effigy cannot be identified
with portrait or bust of any human being. Twin
brother to CHRONOMASTIX, the thing is a freak
expressly designed to prevent inquisitive persons,
ourselves among others, from scrutinising the
fiction then launched on the world.

Reverting once more to the Antimasque and the
orgiastic dance at the end of which the CURIOUS
carry away their deity CHRONOMASTIX : one or
other of the deluded adorers taunts FAME in these
words : "He scornes you and defies you, h'as got
a Fame on's owne, as well as a Faction, and these
will deifie him, to despite you." FAME replies :
" I envie not the Apotheosis. 'Twill prove but
deifying of a Pompion." When these words were
spoken, it is quite possible that neither the figure,
nor the Ode, nor the prefatory addresses had reached
finality. But Jonson 's inside knowledge of the

"TIME VINDICATED"

whole project would enable him to forecast
important results. One of these results, in my
opinion, was that a Pumpkin would be deified by
posterity. In this forecast a note of misgiving is
perceptible enough ; but of spitefulness there is
hardly a trace ; for after all, the pumpkin is a
deserving vegetable — the stress here is on the word
deserving, since that is the epithet by which the
surviving Burbages, in perfect good temper,
described the deceased Shakspere. This apotheosis
idea, I may add, is also prominent in the Shake
speare Ode at the point where Jonson pulls himself
up : :c But stay, I see thee to the hemisphere
advanced and made a constellation there.5' In
the Ode however the apostrophe — half banter, half
congratulation — is entirely free from regret or
misgiving.

From the point of view of the privileged few who
were in the secret, Time Vindicated and the Shake
speare Folio were, I consider, parts of a superlative
Act of Homage to the greatest of modern poets.
From Jonson 's special point of view they were a
pious fraud, in which at the behest of disinterested
love and admiration for Bacon, he consented to
undertake the chief role. After the death of Bacon
Jonson 's mood may have undergone some modifi
cation. Certain it is that the Ode, his finest poem,
is excluded from the first edition, Vol. II, of his
collected Works, and that in his Discoveries he tells
" posterity " certain truths about Shakespeare which
were not even suggested in the Ode.

Hitherto our thoughts have been preoccupied
with Ben Jonson. They shall now be devoted

BACONIAN ESSAYS

more closely to Bacon and the state of his mind and
feelings about 1623. I*1 a pathetic letter of his to
King James, Bacon comforts himself with the
knowledge that his fall was not the " act " of his
Sovereign, and then proceeds : " For now it is thus
with me : I am a year and a half old in misery . . .
mine own means through mine own improvidence
are poor and weak. . . . My dignities remain
marks of your favour, but burdens of my present
fortune. The poor remnants ... of my former
fortunes in plate and jewels I have spread upon
poor men unto whom I owed, scarcely leaving
myself bread. ... I have often been told by many
of my Lords (of your Council), as it were in excusing
the severity of the sentence, that they knew they
left me in good hands. . . . Help me, dear
Sovereign ... so far as I ... that desire to live
to study, may not be driven to study to live."

Here it is to be observed that the proceeds of sale
of the Shakespeare Folio, " printed at his admirers
charge," would help towards relieving the fallen
man's pecuniary distress, whilst the august com
pliment conveyed by the Masque would tend to
soothe his lacerated feelings.

The attitude of a concealed poet to his art is
rarely explicit, or concealment would be next to
impossible. In this connection I ask leave to
quote from an Essay, Shakespeare-Bacon, by
E. W. S., published many years ago.* The
essayist, after having stated that Bacon's qualifi
cations for dramatic work were of a high order,
and that some at least of his recognised Elizabethan

* Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1899.

"TIME VINDICATED"

output actually were dramatic, runs on : " More
over, curious as is Bacon's manner when treating
of ' poesie,' his manner when dealing with
dramatic poetry is more curious still. The
Advancement of Learning though not published
till the reign of her successor, belongs to the age
of Queen Elizabeth, in conception, observation,
reflection, and substance generally. In this work,
after having mapped out the " globe " of human
knowledge into three great continents of which
poetry is one, he finds himself face to face with
dramatic poetry. Compelled to give the thing
a name, he rejects the almost inevitable word
dramatic, in favour of the distant word repre
sentative. And what he permits himself to say
about ' representative ' poetry, in that the natural,
and appropriate place for saying it, seems intended
to suggest — what of course was absurdly untrue —
that he was all but a stranger to anything in the
nature of a dramatic performance. The suggestion
too is strangely out of keeping with passages of
unexpected occurrence in other parts of the book.
For instance, in handling what he calls the ' Georgics
of the mind,' he describes poetry (along with history)
in terms which so admirably characterise the very
best dramatic poetry of the age, that it is difficult
to resist the conviction that he must have been
thinking chiefly of the masterpieces of Shakespeare.
'In poetry,' says he, ' we may find painted forth with
great life, how affections are kindled and incited ;
and how pacified and refrained ; and how again
contained from act and further degree ; how they
disclose themselves, how they work, how they vary,

BACONIAN ESSAYS

how they gather and fortify, how they are inwrapped
one with another, and how they do fight and en
counter one with another . . . how to set affection
against affection, and to master one by another ;
even as we use to hunt beast with beast,' etc. Another
of these unexpected passages seems to imply that
Bacon, writing at the close of the Elizabethan epoch,
was so convinced of the paramount importance of
dramatic poetry, as to have forgotten that there was
any poetry at all, except what had to do with the
theatre. In this passage Bacon has been claiming
that 'for expressing the affections, passions, cor
ruptions, and customs, we are more beholding to
the poets than to the philosophers ' — at this point
he suddenly breaks off with an ironical : ' But it
is not good to stay too long in the theatre.'*

A question that has probably been intriguing
some of my readers is : Why did Bacon abandon
the poet's Crown to which his genius entitled him ?
From among the complex of conceivable reasons
it will suffice to pick out three, (i) In dedicating
the De Augmentis Scientiarum to Prince Charles,
1623, Bacon writes : " It is a book I think will
live, and be a citizen of the world which English
books are not." Again, a letter, of about the same
date, to an intimate friend contains this passage :
" For these modern languages will play the bank-
rowtes with books ; and since I have lost much
time with this age, I would be glad, as God shall
give me leave, to recover it with posterity." " Play
the bank-rowtes " means, I suppose, put a stop to
the currency ; and " lost much time with this age "

* Shakespeare-Bacon pp. 89-91, and Note 2 on p. 91.

"TIME VINDICATED"

is probably an allusion to pseudonymous work.
These and similar passages justify the conclusion
that by this time Bacon had convinced himself that
English as a literary language, was doomed to go
under to Latin. (2) The poet in Bacon, as in
Wordsworth and others, had expired with the
passing of youth. (3) Bacon imagined himself the
Discoverer of a New Instrument or method, by
which human life would be so beatified that posterity
would revere him as one of its greatest benefactors ;
if only men of science (such as Harvey) were for
ever deprived of excuse for pooh-poohing the
Novwn Organum, merely because its inventor was
none other than Shakespeare, sonneteer and
dreamer of dreams.

[Note by the Editor}. There appears to be no
doubt that in " Chronomastix " Jonson was lam
pooning George Wither, whose " Abuses Stript
and Whipt, or Satiricall Essayes," was published
by Budge in 1622, (there had been an earlier
edition in 1613) and was followed by a poem called
"The Scourge." In " Abuses Stript and Whipt "
we find the following lines :

And though full loth, 'cause their ill natures urge,

111 send abroad a satire with a scourge,

That to their shame for this abuse shall strip them,

And being naked in their vices whip them.

And to be sure of those that are most rash

Not one shall 'scape him that deserves the lash.

There is also an Epigram to " Time/' in which
Wither asks :

Now swift-devouring, bald, and ill-fac't Time,

Dost not thou blush to see thyself uncloak't ?

BACONIAN ESSAYS

Another Epigram is to " Satyro-Mastix," the last
lines of which are :

Then scourge of Satyrs hold thy whip from mine,
Or I will make my rod lash thee and thine.

" Wither's Motto " (1621) was " nee habeo nee
careo nee euro." This was satirised by John Taylor,
the Water-Poet, in the words " et habeo, et careo,
et euro," and is obviously alluded to in Jonson's
Masque, where " Nose " says " The gentleman
like Satyr e cares for nobody."

Wither, moreover, quarrelled with the Stationers'
Company and the printers (who disapproved of
his independent method of business), which also
was a subject for Jonson's ridicule in the Masque :

One is his Printer in disguise, and keepes
His presse in a hollow tree, where to conceale him,
He workes by glow-worme light, the moon's too open,
etc., etc.

In the Diet : of National Biography we are told
that " Jonson quarrelled with Alex. Gill the elder
for having quoted Wither's work with approval in
his * Logonomia Anglica ' (1619), and Jonson
revenged himself by caricaturing Wither under
the title of ' Chronomastix ' in the Masque of Time
Vindicated presented at Court 1623-4," an(^ allusion
is made to Jonson's sarcasm with regard to Wither's
quarrel with his printers.

Further, we find John Chamberlain writing to
Sir Dudley Carleton, on January 25, 1622-3, as
follows with reference to the Masque of Time
Vindicated : " Ben Jonson they say is like to
hear of it on both sides of the head for personating

"TIME VINDICATED"

George Withers, a poet or poetaster he terms him,
as hunting after some, by being a Chronomastix,
or whipper of the time, which is become so tender
an argument that it must not be admitted either
in jest or earnest." (The Court and Times of James
the First. Ed. 1848. Vol. II, p. 356.)

These facts seem to have been well known to
Mr. Smithson, for not only does he quote John
Chamberlain's letter in his Nineteenth Century
article, where he expresses the opinion that
" Chronomastix " is " a caricature compounded
in unequal proportions of George Wither and the
Ovid Junior of Jonson's Poetaster (as to which see
an interesting chapter in Shakespeare-Bacon, headed
" A Caricature of some Notable Elizabethan Poet,"
together with the chapter following), but among
his manuscripts were found certain Notes with
reference to George Wither which I cite lower
down. It will be seen, however, that he was con
vinced that Jonson, while lampooning and ridiculing
Wither, the scourger of the time, had for his main
object the glorification of the Shakespearean drama
under cover of a Masque — those glorious works
wherein E Time," which had been vilified by
Wither, found its all-sufficient and splendid
" Vindication."*

* It may perhaps be worth while to quote some of the words put into
the mouth of " Fame " when " the whole Scene opens," and Saturn
sitting with Venus is discovered above, and certain " Votaries " come
forth below, " which are the chorus," shortly before " the Masquers are
discovered."

" Within yond* darkness, Venus hath found out
That Hecate, as she is queen of shades,
Keeps certain glories of the time obscured,
There for herself alone to gaze upon
As she did once the fair Endymion.
These Time hath promised at Love's suit to free
63

BACONIAN ESSAYS

The following are Mr. Smithson's Notes to which
I have made reference :
" Wither sends

Abroad a Satyr with a scourge ;

That to their shame for this abuse shall strip them,

And being naked in their vices whip them.

(Abuses Stript and Whipt. Ed. 1622, p. 305.)

He gives Justices of Peace a warning lest they be
put out of the Commission for partiality (p. 318).
Ruffling Cavaliars also are touched (p. 320).

In the address to the reader of Shepheard's
Hunting, Wither to some extent recants his disgust
at Time — says he has been * persuaded to entertain
a better opinion of the Times than I lately con
ceived, and assured myself, that Virtue had far
more followers than I supposed.' Curiously
enough, therefore, Wither 's frame of mind in
1622* seems to have been similar to that of Jonson
in Time Vindicated. The coincidence would help
perhaps to mislead the judgment of the time, and
may have so commended itself to Jonson.

As being fitter to adorn the age.

By you [i.e., King James] restored on earth, most like his own ;
And fill this world of beauty here, your Court.'*

What were the " certain glories of the time obscured " which Time
had " promised at Love's suit to free " is matter for speculation.

* But Shepheard's Hunting appeared in 1615. Jonson, in the Grand
Chorus at the end of the Masque, writes : —
" Turn hunters then
Again

But not of men.
Follow his ample

And just example,
That hates all chase of malice, and of blood,

And studies only ways of good.
To keep soft peace in breath

Man should not hunt mankind to death,
But strike the enemies of man.

Kill vices if you can," etc.

Here was yet another hit at George Wither, but who was he whose
" ample and just example " was held up as a model for imitation ? [ED.]

"TIME VINDICATED "

I don't think Wither knows why, or by whom
he was persecuted. (See Philarate to Willy in
Eclogue I, and last page but two of * Address to the
Reader.')

He calls Time ' bald and ill-fac'd,' * shameless
time,' speaks of his l deformities,' ' blockish
age,' that * truth ' in this age gets ' hatred,'
* while love and charitie are fled to heaven.'

He took upon him to scourge Time, and he was
certainly arrogant enough, in form at any rate,
for Chronomastix.

I therefore take him to have been the stalking-
horse or blind used by Jonson, the Prince, and some
others, to conceal the true object."

SHAKESPEARE-A THEORY

[The Notes of this Essay (except those inserted by the
Editor) which are denoted by Roman Numerals, will
be found at the end of it.]

THE recent discovery of an entry in a domestic
expenses account book of the Mannours or Manners
family has attracted some notice. According to
Mr. Sidney Lee* the terms of the entry, under the
head " Payments for household stuff, plate,
armour," etc., are : " 1613. Item 31 Martii
to Mr. Shakspeare in gold about my Lorde's
impreso [the terminal o should be a] xliiij8', to
Richard Burbadge for paynting and making yt in
gold xliiij8*. [Total] iiij^viij8." An impresa Cam-
den describes as " a device in picture with his motto
or word borne by noble and learned personages to
notifie some particular conceit of their own/' its
nearest modern analogue being the book-plate.f

* Mr. Smithson's references to Sir Sidney as Mr. Lee show that
this Essay was written many years ago. [Ed.]

f But an impresa was much more than this. Imprese were employed
in tournaments (e. g.). Puttenham says, " The Greeks call it Emblema,
the Italians Impresa, and we a Device, such as a man may put into
letters of gold and send to his mistresses for a token, or cause to be em
broidered in Scutcheons of arms on any bordure of a rich garment, to
give by his novelty marvel to the beholder." On this matter of the
Earl of Rutland's Impresa (it was Francis Manners, the Sixth Earl for
whom the work was executed), see my "7s there a Shakespeare Problem? "
pp. 16-21. It is to be noted that in the year 1613, after all the great
Shakespearean works had been written, we find Shakspere, the (alleged)
great dramatist, then, as we must assume, at the zenith of his fame,
engaged with his fellow-actor, Dick Burbage, to work at Lord Rutland's
new Device, for the magnificent reward of 448. ! [Ed.]

BACONIAN ESSAYS

Burbage seems to have made, as well as painted,
the thing. What there was for Mr. Shakespeare
to do is by no means clear. The motto, if motto
there were, would to a certainty be designated by
the " noble and learned personage " himself.
Moreover, some three years later (1616) Burbage
appears to have executed a similar commission for
the same Earl of Rutland, entirely without assistance.
That the clerk who made the entry denied to Burbage
the " prefix of gentility " which he bestowed upon
" Mr. Shakespeare " is a fact of trivial import. If
— to take an imaginary case — Nick Bottom had been
living " on his means " at South Place, Stratford -
at-the-Bow, this clerk would have dubbed him Mr.
Bottom as a matter of course in the same circum
stances. Mr. Lee is of opinion that " the recovered
document discloses a capricious sign of homage on
the part of a wealthy and cultured nobleman to
Shakespeare. " If he had suggested that the two-
guinea payment to " Mr. Shakespeare " may have
been preceded by a hearty meal in the buttery,
without exciting any feeling of resentment on the
part of either recipient that the meal was not served
in the dining-hall, I should have been more disposed
to agree with him.

The situation is a curious one. But any serious
discussion of it would be premature until we are
actually in possession of the " rich harvest of new
disclosures ' which Mr. Lee teaches us to
expect.* Meanwhile the Bacon theory regarded
as a development of the hypothesis that Shake
speare was a pen-name of Bacon's is certainly not

* Alas, that rich harvest has never seen the light. [Ed.]

SHAKESPEARE— A THEORY

crushed, if it be not actually encouraged, by this
Belvoir disclosure, since no one in his senses would
think of denying the existence of " Mr. Shake
speare " or his acquaintance with Richard Burbage.
In Gilbert Wats' English version (1640) of Bacon's
Instauratio Magna^ Francis Bacon, Baron of
Verulam, Vicont St. Alban, who is designated as

' Tertius a Platone Philosophise Princeps," is
represented pen in hand, tall hat on head, a
voluminous lace ruff round his neck, in the act
of inditing : Mundus Mem Connubio Jungam
Stabili* On the opposite page two worlds, a
Mundus Visibilis and a Mundus Intellectualis are
shown clasping hands across space, in order, no
doubt, to give emphasis to the idea of a world and
mind connubium. The picture typifies the con
ception of Bacon which has prevailed ever since.
A skater on his way to the Engadine declared he
was at a loss to understand why anyone ever went
to Switzerland in summer for pleasure. Some of
us would have been tempted to smile at the remark.
But the prevailing conception of Bacon is probably
quite as inadequate as this skater's conception of
Switzerland. The age of Queen Elizabeth probably
had no presage — not a hint — that Francis Bacon
would ever develop into a " prince of philosophy."
In my opinion the Bacon known to it was not a
natural philosopher1 even in aspiration, but an artist

—an artist in words, who, if circumstances, more
especially family circumstances, had been favourable

* In the portrait Bacon has an open book before him, across whose
pages are written the words " Instaur " and " Magna." On the left-
hand page appear the words " Mundus Mens," and on the right-hand
page the words " connubio jungam stabili." [Ed.]

BACONIAN ESSAYS

any time between 1580 and 1590 would have openly
confessed that poetry was his ideal, and declared
himself a poet. As it was, he took the line of least
friction, and sooner or later acquired the title of
E< concealed poet." How far the concealment
extended in the early days it is impossible to
discover. To Sir Philip Sidney,2 Sir J. Harrington,
and other accomplished young men of their class,
the true state of the case was doubtless an open
secret.

Professor Nichol (Francis Bacon, Part I), though
he thinks that Bacon " did not write Shakespeare's
plays," considers that " there is something startling
in the like magnificence of speech in which they
find voice for sentiments, often as nearly identical
when they anticipate as when they contravene the
manners of thought and standards of action that
prevail in our country in our age. They are
similar in this respect for rank," etc. Shelley
discerned that Bacon " was a poet," and Macaulay
perceived that the " poetical faculty ' was
" powerful " in Bacon. Taine held that Bacon
" thought as artists and poets habitually think,"
that he was one of the finest of a " poetic line,"
that " his mental precede was that of the creator,
not reasoning but intuition." Bacon, then, was
essentially a poet, belonged to the same race as
Sidney for example. Sidney died young, and his
poetic activity ceased some time before he died.
Yet Sidney's poetical achievement has come down
to our day. What has become of Bacon's poetical
achievement ? Was it also concealed ?

Hallam, in the Introduction to the Literature of

SHAKESPEARE— A THEORY

Europe > confessed he was unable to identify " the
young man who came up from Stratford, was
afterwards an indifferent player in a London
theatre, and retired to his native place in middle
life, with the author of Macbeth and Lear."
Emerson (Representative Men) declared : " The
Egyptian verdict of Shakespearean societies comes
to mind, that Shakespeare3 was a jovial actor and
manager. I cannot marry this fact to his verse.
Other admirable men have led lives in some sort
of keeping with their thought ; but this man in
wide contrast." It would be easy to adduce other
evidence pointing in the same direction. But
Hallam and Emerson, unexceptionable witnesses,
will serve the turn. On one side, then, we are
brought into contact with a poet or maker whose
poems elude us. On another side we are con
fronted with poems whose poet or maker eludes
us — some of us. What if Shakespeare were to
Bacon what Callisthenes, Aristophanes' actor-friend,
was to Aristophanes ? Suppose by way of working
hypothesis that such was the case, that Shakespeare
was a pen-name of Bacon's. In that case his
ultimate intention as to dropping or retaining the
mask of pseudonymity would be affected by
various considerations extending far beyond the
family circle, (a) To be " rewarded of" the stage-
manager was probably nothing less than degrading
to a man of good birth, (b) The conditions under
which the hypothetical Shakespeare must have
written, were unfavourable to careful work. A
man who is half ashamed of what he is doing is
hardly likely to do his best, especially when more

BACONIAN ESSAYS

or less concealed. Certainly many of the plays
suffer from faulty construction, inconsistency,
obscurity, bombast and so forth, and what is more
important, Shakespeare himself4 was probably
quite as conscious of these blemishes as were any
of his critics, (c) With us the daily paper exerts
a certain influence on public opinion. In Bacon's
day the theatre was one of the most effective means
of appeal to any considerable audience, and in that
way the name Shakespeare probably got entangled
in controversies with which Bacon felt no desire
to meddle autonymously.6 (d) The moral tendency
of Shakespearean work published before 1609,
Venus and Adonis for example, was not such as to
forward any of the hypothetical author's schemes
for place, (e) Early in the seventeenth century
Bacon seems to have convinced himself that for
purposes of moment Latin was destined to supplant
English. He was haunted moreover by fear of
impending civil commotions, and augured ill for
that " fair weather learning which needs the nursing
of luxurious leisure." (f) Had there been no other
considerations than these, Bacon, even after he
became Solicitor-General, might have been induced
himself to give to the world some at least of his
hypothetical offspring really " perfect of their
limbes as he conceived them." It is not to be
supposed that he would ever have claimed all or
nearly all that passed for Shakespeare's. Much
would have been disavowed altogether, and many
of the more inconvenient things would, quite fairly,
have been ascribed to collaboration, misprints,
inexperience, haste, carelessness, etc. But the

SHAKESPEARE— A THEORY

action of the ill-conditioned group which in 1609
engineered the publication of the Sonnets of Shake
speare, must have greatly reduced the chance that
Bacon would ever consent to edit anything of
Shakespeare's. So far as intimate friends were
concerned, the piratical publication, however
irritating,6 would be comparatively innocuous, and
as for charitable strangers, they might be trusted
to discover extenuating circumstances in the youth
of the author and the fashion of the time. But the
great indiscriminating public, unaccustomed to
make allowances, and led by an enemy like Sir
Edward Coke, would chortle over the self-revela
tions suggested by the book, and put the worst
construction on everything. Rather than face such
a prospect, Bacon would be willing to pay almost
any price, and the price he may be supposed to
have paid was to seem to know nothing and care
nothing about :' Shakespeare J3 or anything that
was his. Adherence to this policy would not
necessarily involve any visible change of attitude
or conduct. On the contrary, the hypothetical
Shakespeare would be urged to hold on his usual
course by the fear that any sudden stoppage, of the
supply of plays for instance, might arouse
suspicions which otherwise would have slept.
Parenthetically it may be observed that Bacon
had already known what it was to give to the world
things — the Essays of 1597 — which he w7ould rather
have kept back, but was compelled to publish
because " to labour the state of them had been
troublesome and subject to interpretation."
The parting between Prospero and Ariel has

BACONIAN ESSAYS

been thought to adumbrate the farewell of Shake
speare, whoever he was, to Poetry — a view that is
plausible enough. It would explain the position
assigned to The Tempest in the First Folio, and
suggest an interesting answer to the question why
Prospero, who " prized his books above his
dukedom " threatened — only threatened — to drown
a particular " book." But no one knows within
several years when The Tempest was written. Nor
is it at all certain that the poem was wholly Shake
speare's.* For anything we know to the contrary,
the editor of the First Folio may have interpolated
the striking invocation — to mention one passage
only— which begins : " Ye elves of hills."7 The
Tempest then, does not enable us to fix the date of
Shakespeare's practical renunciation of poetry. I
say, practical renunciation, because certain passages
in Henry the Eighth which feelingly represent the
insecurity of greatness might ex hypothesi have been
contributed by Bacon just after his fall, though his
practical renunciation could hardly have taken place
later than i6i2.f But whether the date were
1612 or somewhat earlier, the hypothetical Shake
speare was amply provided with other interests and

* I venture to refer to my short article on The Tempest
in " The New World " of April, 1921. The reader may also pro
fitably consult Mr. Looney's " Shakespeare " Identified on this matter,
at p. 513- [Ed.]

t The better opinion now seems to be that Henry VIII is not
Shakespearean, but was written by Fletcher and Massinger in collabora
tion. Mr. James Spedding long ago tendered reasons which have
convinced most of the " orthodox " critics that the better part of this
play, including Wolsey's and Buckingham's speeches, was the work
of Fletcher, and recently Mr. Dugdale Sykes, in his Sidelights on Shake
speare, published at the " Shakespeare Head Press " at Stratford-upon-
Avon (1919), with preface by the late A. H. Bullen, appears to have
proved that all that part of this great spectacular drama which was not
written by Fletcher came from the pen of Massinger, who, as we know,
frequently collaborated with him. [Ed.]

SHAKESPEARE— A THEORY

pursuits, (a) Rhetoric had long held a high place
in his affections. u Rhetoric and Logic/* says he,
" these two, rightly taken, are the gravest of the
sciences, being the arts of arts,"8 and what ex
cellence he attained in the former of these arts we
know from Ben Jonson. (b) Though poesy, the
recreation of his leisure — Bacon would never have
allowed that it was anything but a recreation — were
denied him, prose, splendid inimitable prose was
his to command, (c) The delightful days and
months and years which he had spent with poets
both ancient and modern, particularly Ovid,9 might
be turned to philosophical account, (d) Historical
projects allured him. In the Advancement of
Learning, a history — a prose history no doubt —
of England from the " Wars of the Roses " down
wards is noted as a desideratum, and seems to have
been begun. The History of the Reign of King
Henry VII (1622), however, is the only portion
of the desiderated history which reached complete
ness, (e) Legislative projects also attracted him,
less strongly no doubt than historical, (f) But at
this time the Great Instauration had possessed
itself of the chief place in his affection : "Of this
I can assure you that though many things of great
hope decay with youth,10 yet the proceeding in
that work doth gain upon me, upon affection and
desire," he writes, about 1609, to his bosom friend
Matthew. The instauration, say rather trans
figuration, of human knowledge — that was the
vision which now fascinated him. When the spell
began to work it is difficult to determine. Early
in the seventeenth century his conception of human

BACONIAN ESSAYS

" learning " or " knowledge " or " science " — three
words to which he attached practically the same
meaning — included Poetry, not as an appendix,
but as one of three fundamental constituents.
Perhaps the word " culture, " with " barbarism '
for antithesis, would now come nearest to what he
then meant by learning. The Advancement of
Learning is the work not of a scholar in the technical
sense, but of an omnivorous apprehensive imagina
tive reader. It is the expression by an artist in
words of the serried thoughts of a mind steeped in
poetry, deep versed in human nature, but certainly
not versed in natural philosophy as understood by
his contemporaries — Galileo for example, Gilbert
and others. A passage in the first of its two books
runs : " No man that wadeth in learning or
contemplation thoroughly but will find printed
in his heart nil novi super terram" It is incredible
that Bacon can at this time have caught so much
as a glimpse of the " New Logic," " New Art,"
or — to give its latest name — Novum Organum, which
he afterwards declared was " quite new totally
new in every kind.11 But though the Advancement
was in fact a plea for culture, in Bacon's intention
it was a serious attempt to grapple \\ith philosophy,
an attempt so serious that he afterwards declared
the Novum Organum itself to be the " same
argument sunk deeper." Moreover, in my
opinion, it was his first serious attempt in that
direction, hence its importance to any right
apprehension of his genius.12

About the year 1609, the philosophical en
thusiasm reached a climax. Cogitata et Visa de

SHAKESPEARE— A THEORY

Interpret a tione Naturce, Redargutio Philosophiarum,
Sapientia Veterum, and other pieces, some of which
Boswell, one of his executors, seems to have called
impetus philosophici, were thrown off in rapid
succession. As early as 1610, however, he solicits
the King to employ him in writing a history of his
Majesty's " Time," a hint surely that the philoso
phical impetus had begun to abate. The change,
whether it began that year, or a year or two later, is
intelligible enough. Science had not claimed him
her deliverer. Harvey is reported to have sneered
at his philosophy. Gilbert and Napier may have
started the sneer ; for Bacon obviously under
valued mathematics, and spoke almost contemp
tuously of Gilbert (whom Galileo fully appreciated).
About this time, too, he probably began to suspect
that somewhere in the New Art, there lurked a
defect which would have to be cured before the
apparatus would work. The truth is that in the
philosophical work published or privately circulated
by Bacon before 1610, though there was much to
appeal to the aesthetic side of the human mind,
much to stimulate the cultivated layman's admira
tion for knowledge, for the devoted student of
science there was very little help of a constructive
kind, the only kind of help he really needed.13

The Sapientia Veterum, 1609, is based on a
number of myths selected from the poets and
fabulists of antiquity in virtue of a certain congruity
with Bacon's intuitions and predilections. The
Sylva Sylvarum or Natural History, his latest work,
is based on an assemblage of what by way of
distinction might be called facts. The dissonance

BACONIAN ESSAYS

between the two works is amazing. The Sapientia,
which was intended to bespeak a favourable hearing
for the New Art, busies itself with venerable fictions.
From the Natural History on the other hand, poetry
and fable were to have been rigorously excluded.
Bacon's biographer, Rawley, wrote for the first
edition of the work (1627), an address " To the
Reader, " which winds up : l I will conclude with
an usual speech of his lordship's ; that this work
of his Natural History is the world as God made
it, and not as man made it ; for it hath nothing of
imagination."

Several years before the Sylva was written,
Galileo had censured as paper philosophers certain
contemporaries of his, who set about the investiga
tion of nature as if she were a " book like the ^Eneid
or the Odyssey." One at least of Bacon's intimate
friends, Sir Tobie Mathew,wasno stranger to Padua
and Florence, and it is quite possible that he may
have informed Bacon of these strictures of Galileo's
not long after they were uttered. But, be this as it
may, a momentous change must have taken place
after 1609, not in Bacon's aspiration to be the
greatest of human benefactors to man, but in his
conception of the means by which his vast ex
pectations were to be realised. Had the change
been less than " fundamental," " a good and well
ordered Natural History " would not have been
described in the Phenomena Universi (1622), as
holding the " keys both of sciences and of opera
tions." After 1612 Bacon became for some eight
or nine years so immersed in affairs, as Attorney-
General, Privy Councillor — no sinecure then—

SHAKESPEARE— A THEORY

Lord Chancellor, etc., that it must have been
impossible for him to give to his New Logic a tithe
of the attention it required. " At this period/'
says Dr. Abbott : " there is a great gap in the series
of Bacon's philosophical works. In 1613 he was
appointed Attorney- General, and from that time
till 1620 no literary work of any kind published or
unpublished is known to have issued from his pen.
All that he did was apparently to rewrite repeatedly
and revise the Novum Organum.1* The Organum
made its appearance in 1620 with a dedication to
the King by no means confident of either the worth
or the use of his offering. But as he says in the
proemium that " all other ambition whatsoever was
in his opinion lower than the work in hand," one
would infer that his zeal for philosophy had begun
to revive even before the tragedy of 1621. The
remaining five years of the great man's life — " a
long cleansing week of five years' expiation and
more," he calls it — were more or less distracted
with anxieties in no way connected with philosophy.
He hoped, nevertheless, to present the old King
with a " good history of England, and a better
digest " of the laws, and the young King with a
history of the " time and reign of King Henry the
Eighth."1* But after the most distressful sequela
of his fall had been relieved, his grandiose, imposing
scheme for the renovation or transfiguration of
philosophy must have regained the position it had
held some ten or a dozen years earlier. Without
it, life for him would have been a mean and
melancholy failure. " God hath framed the mind
of man as a mirror or glass capable of the image of

F 81

BACONIAN ESSAYS

the universal world, and joyful to receive the
impression thereof . . . and not delighted in
beholding the variety of things and vicissitude of
times, but raised also to find out the ordinances
which throughout all those changes are infallibly
observed."16 This capacity, this wonder-working
exaltation of the mind had been neglected, and all
but lost, by reason of the interference of Aristotle
and other insolent dictators, and Bacon imagined
himself destined to rehabilitate it, to usher in a
new era, to endow the human race, not with know
ledge alone, but with legions of beneficent arts,17
and for reward to go down to the ages as pre
eminently the Friend of man.18 Compared with
a vision so magnificent, his youthful dream of a
poet's immortality would seem paltry, stale, and
unprofitable. No wonder the old love, poetry,
was forsaken. The wonder would have been if
for the sake of the old love he had done or permitted
or countenanced anything which he thought might
possibly prejudice posterity against the new love,
his " darling philosophy. "19

The more vulnerable points of this tentative
theory20 of Bacon's relation to poetry seem to be
three. First, Bacon's final perseverence in ignoring
his hypothetical offspring. Second, his Translation
of certain Psalms into English Verse which, according
to Dr. Abbott, " so clearly betrays the cramping
influence of rhyme and verse, that it could hardly
have been the work of a true poet even of a low
order." Third, the detailed treatment of poetry
in the Advancement of Learning is essentially and
flagrantly defective. Objection number one—

SHAKESPEARE— A THEORY

Bacon's persistent neglect of the plays — is easily
answered.21 The reasons for continuing to ignore
them may in the aggregate have been even more
cogent at the close, than at the opening of his career.
For a Lord Chancellor, one who had been a
" principal councillor and instrument of mon
archy," to publish not verses merely, but common
plays, would have been a disgrace to the peerage,
and ingratitude, if not disloyalty, to the sovereign
to whom he owed his many promotions. Amongst
the reasons for concealment, which did not exist
at the opening of life, two more may be mentioned :
one, the publication of the Sonnets, has been
sufficiently discussed ; the other, solicitude for
the Great Instauration, has not. In casting about
for an explanation of his frigid reception by con
temporary science, Bacon must have hit upon a
suspicion, shared maybe by King James,22 that
his true greatness after all lay rather in the domain
of poetry than in that of philosophy.23 Dis
appointed in his contemporaries, he would turn
to the ages unborn, resolved that they at any rate
should not start with a bias against his message.
Any suggestion therefore, that he should allow his
true name to be put to a volume of poetry, so
distinguished from versified theology, would be
unconditionally rejected.

To the objection founded on the Translation of
certain Psalms into English Verse several answers
suggest themselves. No artist is always at his best,
least of all in illness and old age, and the Translation
belongs to 1624 when Bacon was recovering from
an attack of a painful disease. In the delightful

BACONIAN ESSAYS

preface to his select edition of Wordsworth's Poems,
Matthew Arnold writes: " Work altogether inferior,
work quite uninspired, flat and dull, is produced by
him (Wordsworth) with evident unconsciousness of
its defects and he presents it to us with the same
faith and seriousness as his best work." Yet no
competent judge of poetry would think of denying
that Wordsworth was a " true poet " of a " high
order."* Again, conventional feeling may have
been partly responsible for the dullness of this
Translation. Dr. Abbott surely underrates the
consequence of his admission that " theological
verse like theological sculpture might seem to
require something of the archaic, and a close
adherence to the simplicity of the original prose."
Grant that Bacon was under the influence of some
such feeling, and the objection we are considering
is virtually answered, such was " Bacon's versatility
in adapting language to the slightest shade of
circumstance and purpose." Once more, the
evidence that Bacon was a " concealed poet " is
strong enough to hold its own against every
argument that can fairly be urged against it, and
to concealment dissimulation is apt to prove in
dispensable. It was so considered by Bacon, and
Bacon's experience of the device was extensive, if
not unique. In a famous Essay he carefully
distinguishes between Simulation and Dissimulation,
and lets it be seen that he regarded the former as

* Milton's versification of the Psalms is much worse than
Bacon's, and if there were any doubt as to the authorship of Paradise
Lost, and Lycidas, and L' Allegro, and // Penseroso, and Milton were
known only as the writer of this versification of the Psalms, it would be
confidently asserted that he could not possibly be the author of the
above-mentioned works. [ED.]

SHAKESPEARE— A THEORY

positively culpable, the latter as not only per
missible but necessary.24 A man dissimulates
when he " lets fall signs or arguments that he is
not that he is. . . .He that will be secret must
be a dissembler in some degree. For men are too
cunning to suffer a man to keep an indifferent
carriage. . . . They will so beset a man with
questions and draw him on and pick it out of him,
that without an absurd silence he must show
inclination one way. ... So that no man can be
secret except he give himself a little scope of
dissimulation ; which is as it were but the skirts
or train of secrecy." The application is obvious.
Bacon's Translation of Certain Psalms is uninspired,
lacks " choiceness of phrase . . . the sweet
falling of the clauses," etc ! Why ? Possibly
because the author " is letting fall signs or argu
ments that he is not that he is ! " The fact that
a thing so trivial as this Translation should have
been published, instead of being reserved for private
circulation only — published too on the heels of the
Shakespeare First Folio — lends additional probability
to this explanation.25

Objection number three. On the hypothesis
that Shakespeare was a pen-name of Bacon's this
objection, like the last, would fall to the ground,
for the essential inadequacy of the Advancement oj
Learning in relation to poetry would explain itself
as part of the " train of secrecy." But it may also
be answered without resorting to the hypothesis.
In the Advancement, dramatic poesy, though
recognised, is deprived of its customary name,
" dramatic," and dubbed " representative," whilst

BACONIAN ESSAYS

lyric, elegiac, and several other kinds of poetry are
conspicuously ignored. The Latin version of the
Advancement, however, the De Augmentis Scien-
tiarum, published some eighteen years after the
Advancement , not only restores to " representative
poesy " its proper name " dramatic, " but also men
tions elegias, odes, lyricos, etc. The objection, as I
understand it, is founded on the assumption that,
at the date of the Advancement, Bacon had still to
learn what poetry essentially was, a defect which at
the date of the De Augmentis he had contrived to
supply by getting up the subject (poetry) much as
a lawyer will cram an unfamiliar subject in order
to speak to his brief. But is there warrant for so
questionable an assumption ? Not a scrap. To
see its absurdity, one has only to compare the
Advancement of Learning with the Apologie for
Poetry by the " learned " Sir Philip Sidney (so the
author is described on the title page), a treatise
which somehow or other made its first appearance
in 1595, and its second under a different title and
with slight additions in I596.28 One of the many
resemblances involved in the comparison is, not
that Sidney and Bacon appear to have read the same
books, but that their literary preference should
have coincided so closely. Among classical authors,
Plutarch was manifestly the prime favourite of both.
Next after Plutarch seem to have come Virgil,
Cicero, Seneca, and Ovid. The Bible, it is true,
plays a far more important part in the Advancement
than in the Apologie, inevitably, considering the
scope of the Advancement, and that it was specially
addressed to a theological king. In those days,

SHAKESPEARE— A THEORY

however, libraries were so scantily furnished that
lovers of literature necessarily became acquainted
with what seems to be an unusually large proportion
of the same authors.27 It may, therefore, be urged
that similarity of literary preference did not imply
direct intercommunication. I will not argue the
point, not because it is incontestable, but because
there are other resemblances the cumulative force
of which is more than enough for my purpose.
The production of a sample half dozen of these will
I hope be forgiven, (a) According to the Apologie
for Poetrie geometry and arithmetic would seem to
be the only constituents of the science of mathe
matics. The Advancement of Learning appears to
take the same view, (b) According to the Apologie
;< knowledge of a man's self " is the highest or
" mistress " knowledge, and her highest end is
" well doing and not well knowing only." The
Advancement holds " the end and term of natural
philosophy " is " knowledge of ourselves " with a
view to " active life " rather than to contemplative,
(c) According to the Apologie "metaphysic" concerns
itself with " abstract notions," builds upon " the
depths of Nature " as distinct from Matter. The
Advancement defines " metaphysic " — which in
cludes mathematics — as the science of " that
which is abstracted and fixed," :< physic " being
the science of " that which is inherent in matter
and therefore transitory." (d) The Apologie
censures philosophers for reducing " true points
of knowledge " into " method " and " school
art." In the Advancement, Bacon condemns " the
over early and peremptory reduction of knowledge

BACONIAN ESSAYS

into arts and methods. " It is a theme on which
he is ever ready to descant. Indeed, the Novum
Organum, a congeries of aphorisms, was probably
designed for a monumental warning against pre
mature systematisation. (e) The Apologie con
trasts the necessary limitations of other artists8*
with the perfect freedom of the poet : " only
the poet . . . goeth hand in hand with nature,
not inclosed within the narrow warrant of her
gifts . . . where with the force of a divine breath
he bringeth things forth for surpassing her doings,
with no small argument to the incredulous of the
first accursed fall of Adam ; sith our erected wit
maketh us know what perfection is." The Advance
ment, in a charming passage, instructs us that one
of the chief uses of poetry " hath been to give some
shadow of satisfaction to the mind of man in those
points wherein the nature of things doth deny it,
the world being in proportion inferior to the soul. . .
Therefore poesy was ever thought to have some
participation of divineness, because it doth raise
and erect the mind, by submitting the shows of
things to the desires of the mind ; whereas reason
doth buckle and bow the mind into the nature of
things." (f) The Apologie holds " that there are
many mysteries contained in poetry which of
purpose were written darkly, lest by profane wits
it should be abused." The Advancement affirms
that one of the uses of poesy is to " retire and
obscure . . . that which is delivered," "that -is
when the secrets and mysteries of religion, policy,
and philosophy are involved in fables and parables."
(g) The author of the Apologie venerated learning —

SHAKESPEARE— A THEORY

" the noble name of learning,5' he calls it — as if
it were a sort of talisman. Bacon's attitude towards
learning, the theme of the Advancement, probably
differed but little, if it differed at all from that of the
Apologist, (h) The aims of the two authors were
to a large extent identical, for the first book of the
Advancement was a vindication of the dignity and
importance of Poetry as one of the chief constituents
of " learning." Other resemblances, more or less
significant, will doubtless be picked up by any alert
reader. So numerous are they in the earlier portion
of the Advancement that reading it one seems to be
continually in touch with Sidney — assuming him
to have been author of the Apologie. The effect
in my own case has been such as to generate a
conviction not indeed that Sidney and Bacon were
personally intimate — though that is quite possible —
but that Bacon when writing the Advancement was
thoroughly familiar with the Apologie.

It appears then that the poetical defects or
eccentricities of the Advancement, to whatever
cause they may have been due — and honest dis
simulation is the most likely cause — were not due
to ignorance of poetry. Consequently the last of
the three objections fails of effect.

" But/' says one, " suppose for a moment that your
precious theory is not incoherent, what then ? A
dream is not less a dream because it happens to
hang together. So with your theory. Its value
is of the smallest unless it serve to harmonise or
explain phenomena otherwise intractable. The
omission to apply this test is fatal to your
pretensions." I have no fault to find with the

BACONIAN ESSAYS

criticism, except that it is founded on misappre
hension. It takes for granted that I have under
taken to establish something, a Bacon theory to wit.
That feat may be possible to an able advocate, after
a " harvest of new disclosures." For my part, so
diffident am I of my power to do anything of the
kind, that the thought of attempting it here had not
even occurred to me.

For the rest, on good cause shown my precious
theory will be abandoned without reserve and
without a pang, though I shall hardly be able to
rise to that fullness of joy which according to M.
Poincare (Le Science et 1'Hypothese) ought to be
felt by the physicist who has just renounced a
favourite hypothesis because it has failed to satisfy
a crucial test.

NOTES TO SHAKESPEARE— A THEORY

(1) Note : The words philosopher, philosophy, philosophical
throughout this paper mean what they meant in Bacon's day.
The word science, on the other hand, when not in quotation, is
to be understood in its modern sense.

(2) From Sidney's Apologie for Poetrie (of which more here
after) we learn that he was in the secret of some " Queis meliore
luto finxit prcecordia Titan, and who are better content to suppress
the outflowing of their wit than by publishing it to be accounted
knights of the same order " as those " servile wits who think it
enough to be rewarded of the printer." Similarly Puttenham,
in his Arte of English Poesie (1589), writes : " I know very many
notable Gentlemen in the Court that have written commendably
and suppressed it again, or else suffered it to be publisht without
their names to it." The Arte of English Poesie was dedicated
to Bacon's uncle and quasi guardian, Lord Burleigh. In this
connexion, a saying ascribed to Edmund Waller is worth notice :
" Sidney and Bacon were nightingales who sang only in the
spring, it was the diversion of their youth."

SHAKESPEARE— A THEORY

(3) From Mr. Shakespeare's autographs one gathers that he
was indifferent as to the spelling of his name, and that if he had
a preference, it was for the form Shakspere rather than Shakes
peare. For my present purpose it is necessary to distinguish
between the owner of New Place, Stratford, and the author of
Macbeth and Lear. For the former, Shakspere would have
been better than " Mr. Shakespeare." But having followed
the Belvoir document so far, I shall continue to use " Mr." as the
distinction between the two — without prejudice to the question
whether or not they were actually one and the same. [ The
signatures show that the Stratford player wrote his name
" Shakspere." He seems never to have made use of the form
** Shakespeare," which is, in truth, a quite different name from
that of " Shakspere," or " Shaksper," or " Shaxpur," and such
like forms. Ed.]

(4) Some will have it that Shakespeare was a kind of writing
machine, and look to Ben Jonson as their prophet. Yet Jonson's
testimony both in the great Ode to Shakespeare and elsewhere —
agreeing herein with the internal evidence of several of the
plays — negatives a mechanical explanation.

(5) In the case of something which apparently " grew from "
himself, dealt with the Deposing of Richard II, and " went
about in other men's names," pseudonymity seems to have failed
to screen Bacon from cross-examination and censure by Queen
Elizabeth. (Bacon's Apologie in certaine imputations concerning
the late Earl of Essex . 1 604 .)

(6) Browning and others less eminent than he have questioned
the autobiographical value of the Sonnets. Even so they would
be serious impedimenta to a Solicitor-General on his way to the
Attorney-Generalship, Privy Councillorship, and other con
spicuous offices.

(7) It is obviously borrowed, mutatis mutandis, from Ovid's
Metamorphoses. " Deeper than did ever plummet sound," how
ever, is not from Ovid's Medea, but it seems to me from Act
III, Sc. 3, of The Tempest itself. Golding's English version of
the Metamorphoses may well have been in the writer's mind
along with the Latin original.

(8) Advancement of Learning. " Art of Arts " was a
favourite phrase of his. Of " rational knowledges " he says
in the same book : " These be truly said to be the art of arts."

BACONIAN ESSAYS

(9) The idee mere of the Sapientia Veterum — allegorisation —
is one which I think no notable man of science among his con
temporaries would have attempted to press into the service of
science as Bacon pressed it. With contemporary men of letters,
poets especially, it was in high favour, partly I suppose as an
exercise of ingenuity, partly as a " talking point " wherewith to
capture the vulgar, and partly of course for higher reasons.
Sir John Harington's application of it to Orlando Furioso (1591),
is a reductio ad absurdum of the fashion.

(10) Poetry for example \

(n) The second book of the Advancement — where " rational
knowledges " or " arts intellectual " are being discussed —
promises, " if God give me leave, a disquisition, digested into
two parts ; whereof the one I term experientia literata, and the
other interpretatio natures, the former being but a degree or
rudiment of the latter." What the latter was in 1605 is matter
of conjecture. Possibly Valerius Terminus, Of the Interpretation
of Nature, with the Annotations of Hermes Stella, a curious essay,
seemingly meant to be anonymous, or pseudonymous, may
enable us to measure its value. Concerning the former, ex
perientia liter ata, we may learn from the De Augmentis Scien-
tiarum, the authorised Latin version of the Advancement of
Learning, quite as much as any of us need wish to know.

It may be well to bear in mind that in addition to the above
double promise, the Advancement of Learning contains other
promises including one, " if God give me leave," of a legal work
—prudentia activa — digested into aphorisms.

(12) The nebulous Temporis Partus Maximus, of very
uncertain date, was scarcely more serious, I suppose, than the
eloquent eulogies of " knowledge " or " philosophy " in Bacon's
" apparently unacknowledged " Conference of Pleasure, 1592,
and Gesta Graiorum, 1594, though towards the close of his life
he seems to have claimed for it a somewhat higher value.

(13) According to Professor Fowler (Francis Bacon, Mac-
millan) the foundation of the Royal Society was due to the
impulse given by Bacon to experimental science. Dr. Abbott
(Francis Bacon, Macmillan) is struck by a different aspect of
Bacon : " By a strange irony the great depreciator of words
seems destined to derive an immortal memory from the rich
variety of his style and the vastness of his too sanguine expec
tations." I cannot help doubting whether, if Bacon had died
before 1620 or thereabouts, he would have been held to have
placed experimental science under any obligation at all.

SHAKESPEARE—A THEORY

(14) No student I suppose would willingly be without the
volume here quoted, " Francis Bacon, by Edwin A. Abbott.

(15) Rawley's dedication, 1627, °f tne Natural History to
Charles the First.

(16) Advancement of Learning. Book I.

(17) The art of prolonging life was, he thought, one of the
most desirable.

(18) He " bequeathed " his soul and body to God. " For
my name and memory I leave it to men's charitable speeches,
and to foreign nations, and to the next ages."

(19) Rawley in the dedication of 1627 uses this expression
as if it were Bacon's rather than his own.

(20) I am not aware that in its integrity it is shared by
anyone.

(21) More easily by far than Mr. Shakespeare's neglect of
his supposed poetical issue more especially after his retirement
to Stratford. What was there, what would there be in the
Stratford of those days with its Quineys, Harts, Sadlers, Walkers,
and the rest, to interest a spirit so finely touched as Shake
speare's ? But this is too large a question to be discussed here.

(22) James I is reported to have said of the Novum Organum :
" It is like the peace of God which passeth all understanding."

(23) Bacon's tripartite division of knowledge — history with
memory for its organ, poetry with imagination, and philosophy
with reason — is well known. When he made this division the
poetic use of the imagination was one which few may have known
better than he. That he was equally well acquainted with the
scientific use of the imagination is highly improbable.

(24) Sir P. Sidney seems to have arrived at a like conclusion,
for he speaks of an " honest dissimulation."

(25) Whether the absence of proof that Bacon, as Dr. Abbott
observes, " felt any pride in or set any value on his unique
mastery of English " should be similarly interpreted is a more
difficult question. Possibly admiration of his vernacular became
nauseous to him as suggesting something less than admiration

BACONIAN ESSAYS

of his philosophy. Of his Latin, the Latin of the Sapientia
Veterum, he writes to his friend : " They tell me my Latin is
turned silver and become current." His apparent indifference
to vehicle or language therefore did not extend beyond his
mother tongue.

(26) It must have circulated privately some years before
1595, for Sir John Harington in his English version (1591) of
Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, calls Sidney " our English Petrarke,"
and refers to his Apologie for Poetry (along with the Arte of
English Poesie, 1589, dedicated to Lord Burleigh) as handling
sundry poetical questions "right learnedly." I may add that
the motto to Sidney's Apologie — odi profanum vulgus et arceo —
touches the motto to Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis ; that
King Lear touches the Arcadia ; and generally that a complete
enumeration of the apparent contacts between Sidney and
Shakespeare would probably fill many pages. [Some have even
ventured to doubt whether the poetry which goes in the name
of Sidney, who died at Zutphen in 1586, was really written by
Sidney at all. Ed.]

(27) It is interesting to note in relation to Aristotle, who is
cited again and again in both Advancement and Apologie, that the
Apologie endorses his dramatic precept of " one place, one day."
Another of the Apologie' s references to Aristotle : " which
reason of his, as all his, is most full of reason," gives one to
think. The Advancement disapproves, it may be added, of
tying modern tongues to ancient measures : "In modern
languages it seemeth to me as free to make new measures of
verses as of dances."

(28) Astronomy and metaphysic are there considered as
arts, whilst poetry ranks as a science.

BEN JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE

BEN JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE*

ANOTHER exasperating lucubration on the Shake
speare problem! We have the Plays themselves.
Why disturb a venerable belief by hypotheses incapable
of proof, and neither venerable nor even respectable?
To answer offhand — Curiosity about the How of
remarkable events is not likely to die out so long
as intelligent beings continue to exist : Without
the aid of hypotheses, science were impossible :
Astronomers would still be expounding the once
venerated doctrine of a stable Earth and a revolving
Sun, a doctrine daily corroborated by the testimony
of our eyes. Moreover, the " venerable belief 5:
that Shakspere and Shakespeare were one and the
same is mainly founded on the hypothesis that Ben
Jonson's famous Ode to Shakespeare (1623) is all
to be taken at face-value. Praise — splendid praise
—is unquestionably its dominant constituent ; but
other ingredients — enigma, jest, make-believe — are
commingled with the praise.

The exordium of this Ode consists of sixteen
laborious lines :

To draw no envy (Shakespeare) on thy name,
Am I thus ample to thy Booke and Fame ;J
While I confesse thy writings to be such,

As neither Man nor Muse can praise too much.
*This Essay was written by Mr. Smithson in the year 1919.
G 97

BACONIAN ESSAYS

Tis true, and all mens suffrage. But these wayes

Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise ;
For seeliest Ignorance on these may light,

Which, when it sounds at best, but eccho's right ;
Or blinde Affection, which doth ne'er advance

The truth, but gropes, and urgeth all by chance ;
Or crafty Malice might pretend this praise,

And thinke to ruine, where it seem'd to raise.
These are, as some infamous Baud, or whore,

Should praise a Matron. What could hurt her more ?
But thou art proof against them, and indeed

Above th'ill fortune of them, or the need.
I, therefore, will begin, etc.

This emphatic disclaimer of any intention to
draw envy, ill-will, discredit, on the august name
Shakespeare, had a deep meaning, or Jonson would
not have given it such prominence. It reads as
if addressed to a living person, and the subsequent
apostrophe, " Thou art a Moniment, without a
tombe," chimes with this suggestion. The root
difficulty of the passage lies in the obviously genuine
conviction of the author that Shakespeare was in
danger of being hurt by praise, noble, sincere and
universally allowed to be just. As for the assertion
that Shakespeare was " indeed above " the reach
of harm, it is only pretence. Having dispatched
this tiresome business, the eulogist lets himself
go:

I therefore will begin, Soule of the Age !

The applause ! delight ! the wonder of our Stage !
My Shakespeare, rise ; I will not lodge thee by

Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lye
A little further, to make thee a roome ,

Thou art a Moniment, without a tombe.
* * * #

And though thou hadst small Latine, and lesse Greeke,
From thence to honour thee, I would not seeke

For names ; but call forth thund'ring Aeschilus,
Euripides, and Sophocles to us,

BEN JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE

Paccuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead,

To life againe, to heare thy buskin tread,
And shake a Stage ; Or, when thy Sockes were on,

Leave thee alone, for the comparison
Of all that insolent Greece, or haught ie Rome

Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.
Triumph, my Britaine, thou hast one to showe,

To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe.
He was not of an age, but for all time !

And all the Muses still were in their prime,
When like Apollo he came forth to warme

Our eares, or like a Mercury to charme.
Nature herselfe was proud of his designes,

And joy'd to weare the dressing of his lines.

Looke how the fathers face

Lives in his issue, even so, the race
Of Shakespeares minde, and manners brightly shines

In his well turned, and true-filed lines ;
In each of which, he seems to shake a Lance,

As brandish' t at the eyes of ignorance.
Sweet Swan of Avon ! What a sight it were

To see thee in our waters yet appeare,
And make those flights upon the bankes of Thames,

That so did take Eliza and our James.
But stay. I see thee in the Hemisphere

Advanc'd, and made a Constellation there.
Shine forth, thou Starre of Poets, and with rage,

Or Influence, chide, or cheere the drooping Stage ;
Which since thy flight fro' hence, hath mourn'd like night,

And despaires day, but by thy Volumes Light."

Passing by the half serious " Thou art a Moniment
without a tombe," we are pulled up by the line :
" And though thou hadst small Latine," etc. The
internal evidence of his poems and plays proves that
Shakespeare must have had a regular education, as
distinguished from mere smatterings picked up in
a village school of the sixteenth century. As to
Latin in particular, the etymological intelligence
shown in the handling of words derived from that
language is almost conclusive. The evidence of

BACONIAN ESSAYS

contemporaries tells the same tale. " W.C.," for
instance, in Polimanteia (c. 1595) intimates that
Shakespeare was a " schollar," and a member of
one of our " Universities."* But there is no need
to labour the point of Shakespeare's culture. Indeed
the innuendo of " small Latin J> as applied to Shake
speare is sufficiently refuted by other passages in
the Ode itself. " All scenes of Europe," classico-
historical as well as modern, owe him " homage."
He was another " Apollo J) ; each of his " well
turned and true-filed lines " was sufficient to
enlighten " ignorance." What then are we to
make of a jibe, apparently levelled at Shakespeare,
that he was a quite unlettered rustic ? Some years
after the date of the Ode, and in order, as he says,
to justify his " owne candor," Jonson told
" posterity " (as we shall see) that Shakespeare
wrote with a " facility " so unbridled that he often
blundered. t But even then, though his mood in
the interval had veered right round from eulogist to
candid critic, Jonson dropped no hint that Shake
speare lacked Latin or Greek. The jibe therefore,
did not fit Shakespeare, but must have been made
to the measure of some one else.

To continue our examination of the Ode. What
can Jonson have meant by interspersing it with
trashy jests upon the two syllables of the name (no
longer august) Shakespeare ? " Shake a stage " ;
" shake a lance, as brandished at the eyes of

* See my Shakespeare Problem Restated, p. 342. [Ed.]

t Jonson says " wherein he flowed with that facility that sometimes
it was necessary he should be stop'd ; Sufflaminandus erat, as Augustus
said of Haterius." This means that he had to be " stop'd " not in
writing but in talking. See my Is there a Shakespeare Problem ? p. 386,
seq. [Ed.]

100

BEN JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE

ignorance/' Was there something irresistibly
funny about the name ? Again, what sort of
ignorance was threatened by the beauty and finish
of Shakespeare's lines ? The ignorance of persons
who for Shakespeare mistook a man untinctured
with literature ? The " Sweet Swan of Avon "
apostrophe suggests comparison with what, in his
Masque of Owles (1626), Jonson wrote about
" Warwick Muses." These charming creatures are
there represented as inspired, not by " Pegasus,"
but by a " Hoby-horse."* Was this sarcasm
reminiscent of the well-known lines which an
Oxford graduate informs us were " oidered " by
the Stratford man " to be cut upon his tombstone " ?
Certainly Pegasus was innocent of them. Here
they are :

Good frend, for Jesus sake forbeare
To digg the dust encloased heare ;
Bleste be the man that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones.

To return to the Ode. The lines which follow
the " Sweet Swan " apostrophe are deserving of
notice, chiefly because they tell us that King James
(as well as Queen Elizabeth) was under the spell
of Shakespeare. Then comes the ejaculation :
" But stay ! I see thee in the hemisphere advanced,
and made a constellation there." Is it possible
that Jonson expected his readers — such of them as
were not in the secret — to follow him here ? To

* The so-called Masque of Owls begins with the stage-direction :
" Enter Captain Cox on his Hobby horse," of which animal the Captain
says : " He is the Pegasus that uses to wait on Warwick Muses, and
on gaudy days he paces Before the Coventry Graces." The " Warwick
Muses " are generally supposed to be the Morris-dancers of the county,
with whom the hobby-horse was usually associated. [Ed.]

101

BACONIAN ESSAYS

behold Shakespeare, a la Berenice's hair, translated
into the constellation Cygnus ? Not he ; that were
an order too large for credulity itself to honour.
What Jonson had in his mind's eye was not the
starry heaven, but the British House of Peers .*
Such is this famous Ode. It suffers from
manoeuvres, the object of which had to be kept
dark ; and this I take to be the reason for its
exclusion from the second volume (1640) of
Jonson 's Works, where it would have been quite
at home amongst the Odes, Sonnets, Elegies and
so forth, which go to make up that volume.

Turn we now to Jonson 's Timber or Discoveries,
a work written years after the Ode and not printed
till 1641, some three or four years after his death.
These Discoveries consist in the main of passages
lifted from Latin writers, notably Seneca the father
(Controversice), and entered promiscuously in
Jonson 's Commonplace books. The borrowings
are often mutilated and always treated without
ceremony. For our purpose it is the application,
not the accuracy of translation that matters. In
quoting from them I shall give italics and capital
letters as they appear in the slovenly print (1641),
of which I have several copies, one of which by the
way is inscribed " J. P. Collier " on the title page.
A Discovery concerning Poets, runs thus :

Nothing in our Age, I have observed, is more pre
posterous, than the running Judgments upon Poetry and
Poets ; when we shall heare those things . . . cried
up for the best writings, which a man would scarce
vouchsafe to wrap any wholesome drug in ; he would

* To which, of course. Bacon had been " translated," first as Baron
Verulam, and later as Viscount St. Alban. [Ed.]

102

BEN JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE

never light his Tobacco with them. . . . There are
never wanting, that dare preferre the worst . . . Poets :
. . . Nay, if it were put to the question of the Water-
rimers workes, against Spencer's, I doubt not but they
[the Water-rimers'] would find more suffrages .

The next Discovery is more to my purpose :

Poetry in this latter Age, hath prov'd but a meane
Mistresse to such as have wholly addicted themselves
to her ; or given their names up to her family. They
who have but saluted her on the by, and now and then
tendred their visits, shee hath done much for, and
advanced in the way of their owne professions (both the
Law and the Gospel) beyond all they could have hoped or
done for themselves without her favour.

From this the reader will gather that under
" Eliza and our James/' lawyer-poets who masked
their poems — " in a players hide," perhaps — were
likely candidates for legal honours.

The next Discovery but one runs thus :

De Shakespeare nostrat. I remember the players have
often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in
all his writing (whatever he penned) hee never blotted
out a line. My answer hath beene, would he had blotted
a thousand. ... I had not told posterity this, but for
their ignorance who chose that circumstance to commend
their friend by wherein he most faulted. And to justifie
mine owne candor, for I lov'd the man and doe honour
his memory (on this side idolatry) as much as any . He
was indeed honest, and of an open and free nature ;
had excellent phantasie ; brave notions and gentle
expressions ; wherein he flow'd with that facility that
sometime it was necessary he should be stop'd. . . .
His wit was in his owne power, would the rule of it had
beene so too. . . . But he redeemed his vices with
his vertues.

Another Discovery (p. 99)* censures " all the
Essayists, even their Master Montaigne." The

* This is No. LXV. Nota 6, in Sir I. Gollancz's Edition. [ED.]

103

BACONIAN ESSAYS

slur suggested by this censure upon Bacon is
significant. We were wont to believe that Bacon's
fame as a master of English rested securely on his
Essays, and perhaps among his acknowledged works
no better foundation is discoverable. Jonson 's
estimate (to be quoted presently) of Bacon's
achievement " in our tongue/' is at least as high
as ours. Yet Jonson does not appreciate Bacon's
Essays. The dilemma seems to be this : either
Jonson was writing at random, or he knew of
unacknowledged Baconian work which he was
not free to disclose.

Another Discovery treats De darts Oratoribus,
and among them of Dominus Verulamius* in these
words :

There hapn'd in my time one noble Speaker, who was
full of gravity in his speaking. His language (where hee
could spare or passe by a jest) was nobly censorious. . . .
No member of his speech but consisted of his owne
graces. His hearers could not cough, or looke aside
from him, without losse. . . . No man had their
affections more in his power. The feare of every man
that heard him was lest hee should make an end.

On the next page after an appreciative notice of
the De Augmentis Scientiarum, which was published
almost simultaneously with the Shakespeare Ode,
Jonson over-praises and misreads the Novum
Organum in these words :

Which though by most of superficiall men. who cannot
get beyond the Title of Nominals, it is not penetrated,
nor understood ; it really openeth all defects of Learning
whatsoever and is a Booke ; Qui longum noto scriptori
porriget czvum.

•No. LXXI.

104

BEN JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE

My object in giving these two quotations is only
to show that there is nothing in them to lead up to
the arresting praise of Bacon expressed in my next
quotation, which comes after a list of English
writers or wits, the elder Wiat, the Earl of Surrey,
Sir Philip Sidney (a " great Master of wit,") Lord
Egerton, the Chancellor, and runs thus :

But his [the his refers to L. C. Egerton] learned and
able, though unfortunate Successor, is he, who hath
fill'd up all numbers, and perform'd that in our tongue,
which may be compared, or preferr'd, either to insolent
Greece, or haughty Rome. In short, within his view,
and about his times, were all the wits borne, that could
honour a language, or help study. Now things daily
fall ; wits grow downe-ward, and Eloquence growes
back-ward : So that hee may be nam'd, and stand as
the marke and akme of our language.*

In order to appreciate this passage, the reader
should grasp (i) that Jonson's mind at the time
was full of memories of Bacon ; (2) that in a
subsequent Discovery — De Poetica — he distinguishes
Poetry from oratory as " the most prevailing/'
" most exalted " " Eloquence," and describes the
Poet's " skill or Craft of making " as the " Queene
of Arts " ; (3) that Jonson, proud of his own
metier as poet, would never have allowed, still less
asserted, that Bacon had " filled up all numbers,"
had he not known that Bacon was a great poet.
Where is this wonderful poetry to be found ? The
answer is ready to hand. The famous writer who,
according to the Discovery, had " perform'd that
in our tongue " which neither Greece nor Rome
could surpass, is the very man who, according to
the Ode, had achieved that in English which defied

* No. LXXII.

105

BACONIAN ESSAYS

" comparison " with " all " that Greece or Rome,
or the civilisations that succeeded Greece and Rome,
had given to the World. Bacon is that Man, and
Shakespeare was his pen-name.

This hypothesis — that Shakespeare was the pen-
name of Bacon — will pilot us through our difficulties.
The disclaimer (in the Ode) for example, of any
intention to injure the august name need puzzle us
no longer. Bacon's reputation was imperilled by
publication of the great Book ; for if the Public
once got wind that he had trafficked with " common
players " his name, already smirched by the verdict
of the House of Peers, would have been irreparably
damaged. A passage from an anonymous Essay
of mine (Bacon- Shakespeare ; projected 1884-5 :
published 1899), mav be tolerated here. The
Essay, after having suggested that Greene's allusion
to Shakespeare as having a " tiger's heart wrapt
in a player's hide " pointed to concealment behind
an actor, proceeds :

John Davies . . . characterises poetry (contem
poraneous) as " a worke of darkness," in the sense of a
secret work, not in disparagement : Davies loved poetry
and poets too well for that. The anonymous author
of Wit's Recreations, in a kindly epigram " To Mr. William
Shake-speare," says : " Shake-speare we must be silent
in thy praise, cause our encomions will but blast thy
bayes." . . . Edward Bolton in the ... sketch (or
draft) of his Hypercritica, . . . after having mentioned
" Shakespeare, Beaumont, and other writers for the
stage " thinks it necessary to remind himself that their
names required to be " tenderly used in this argument."
(accordingly) He ... excluded the name of
Shakespeare . . . from the published version of his
Hypercritica.

To return again to the Ode. Its jests about
shaking a stage (compare Greene's " Shakescene "),

106

BEN JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE

shaking a lance, and its ecstatic vision of Shake
speare enthroned among the stars were no doubt
intended to amuse the tv\o Earls, and other patrons
of the famous Folio.

As for the sweeping accusation in the Timber
or Discoveries, that Poetry had been a mean Mistress
to openly professed as distinguished from furtive
or concealed poets, it would have been unpardonable
had the Stratford man been a poet ; for William
Shakspere, Esq., of New Place, Stratford-on-Avon,
spent his last years in the odour of prosperity.

Other testimony, quite independent of Jonson's,
to the existence of an intimate relation between
Bacon and the Muses, Apollo, Helicon, Parnassus,
is abundant enough. Here are a few samples :
Thomas Randolph shortly after Bacon's death
accuses Phoebus of being accessory to Bacon's
death, lest the God himself should be dethroned
and Bacon be crowned king of the Muses * George
Herbert calls Bacon the colleague of Apollo.
Thomas Campion, addressing Bacon says :
"Whether . . . the Law, or the Schools (in the
sense of science or knowledge), or the sweet Muse
allure thee," etc. At a somewhat later date, Waller
said that Bacon and Sidney were nightingales who
sang only in the spring (the reference has escaped
me, and memory may possibly deceive me).t
Coming to comparatively recent times we find
Shelley, an exceptional judge of poetry, was of

* See Manes Verulamiani, published by Sir Wm. Rawley (1626).
No. 32, by Thomas Randolph of Trinity College, Cambridge. [Ed.]

f Waller in the dedication of his works to Queen Henrietta Maria,
speaks of Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Francis Bacon as " Nightingales
who sang only with spring ; it was the diversion of their youth." [Eo.]

107

BACONIAN ESSAYS

opinion that Bacon " was a poet." It may possibly be
objected that Bacon's versified Psalms (in English)
are not poetical.* But these Psalms belong to about
1624, when Bacon — ex hypothesi — had turned his
back on poetry for ever. What they prove, if they
prove anything, is that Bacon was a literary Proteus
who could take on any disguise that happened to
suit his purpose, a faculty which no student of Bacon
would ever think of disputing.

Inferences drawn from Bacon's reticence or
extracted from his works have yet to be weighed.
In the nineties of the sixteenth century he can be
shown to have devoted much time and thought to
the writing and preparation of a species of dramatic
entertainment known as Devices. Even after he
became Lord Chancellor, he risked injuring his
health rather than deny himself the pleasure of
assisting at a dramatic performance given by Gray's
Inn. As a student of human nature, moreover, he
had scarcely an equal (bar " Shakespeare.") And
yet he seems to have been ignorant of the existence
of any such person as Shakespeare, although that
name must have been bandied about and about in
the London of his day, especially among members
of the various Inns of Court, his own Gray's in
particular.

Neglecting Bacon's poetical and interesting
Devices, I confine my observations to the Advance
ment of Learning (1605), which though not written
in what Waller held to be the singing time of life,
reveals (while trying to conceal) the true bent of
his genius. The Work was expressly intended to

* See note ante p. 84. [Eo.]

108

BEN JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE

embrace the totality of human knowledge then
garnered. Yet with the air of one who had no
misgivings about the propriety of his classification
he divides his vast subject into three categories,
three only, and one of these is Poesie. The
other two are History and Philosophic, the latter
of which embraces " Natural Science/' divided
into " Phisicke " and " Metaphisicke," " Mathe-
maticke" pure and mixt, anatomy, medicine, mental
and moral science, and much besides. The work
teems with poetical quotations, similies, allusions.
Dealing with medicine the author gravely informs
his readers that " the poets did well to conjoin
music and medicine in Apollo, because the office of
medicine is but to tune this curious harp of man's
body, and reduce it to harmony." He cannot
refrain from telling us that the pseudo-science of
the alchemist was foretold and discredited by the
fable of Ixion and the Cloud. With him, what we
mean by endowment of research becomes provision
for encouraging " experiments appertaining to
Vulcan and Daedalus," etc. No wonder the
Harveys, Napiers, and other pioneers of lyth.
century science did not join in that chorus of
admiration for Bacon, which seems to have included
all i yth century men of letters. Sir Henry Wotton
(for example) will have it that Bacon had " done
a great and ever living benefit to all the children
of Nature ; and to Nature herself in her uttermost
extent . . . who never before had so noble nor
so true an interpreter, or so inward a secretary of
her cabinet." One can imagine the laughter with

109

BACONIAN ESSAYS

which Galileo would have greeted this preposterous
assertion.

Out of sight of philosophy, metaphysics,
mathematics, etc., and in the presence of poetry,
the author is in his element and speaks with
authority. In handling the subject of mental
culture — " Georgics of the mind " is his phrase-
he takes for granted that poets (with whom he
couples historians) are the best teachers of this
science, for in them :

We may find painted forth, how affections are kindled
and incited ; and how pacified and refrained ; and
how again contained from act and further degree ;
how they disclose themselves ; how they work ; how
they vary ; how they gather and fortify ; how they are
enwrapped one within another ; and how they do fight
and encounter one with another.

" Poesie," he says elsewhere, is " for the most part
restrained in measure of words," but in " other
points extreamely licensed, and doth truly refer to
the imagination. " Its use, he goes on to say :

Hath been to give some shadow of satisfaction to the
mind of man in those points wherein the nature of things
doth deny it, the world being in proportion inferior to
the soul ; by reason whereof there is agreeable to the
spirit of man, a more ample greatness, a more exact
goodness, and a more absolute variety, than can be found
in the nature of things . . . and therefore it was ever
thought to have some participation of divineness, because
it doth raise and erect the mind, by submitting the shows
of things to the desires of the mind. ... In this third
part of learning (or knowledge) which is poesie, I can
report no deficience. For being as a plant that cometh
of the lust of the earth, without formal seed, it hath sprung
up and spread abroad more than any other kind. But
to ascribe unto it that which is due ; for the expressing
of affections, passions, corruptions, and customs, we are
beholding to poets more than to the philosophers' works ;

110

BEN JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE

and for wit and eloquence, not much less than to orators*
harangues. But it is not good to stay too long in the
theatre.

Why, when he was enumerating the various kinds
of poesie, did he eschew the apt word dramatic,
and choose the vague word representative instead ?
Why hurry away from his subject (poetry) by reason
of its intimate connection with the theatre ? The
answer leaps to the eye. For him, poetry, especially
dramatic poetry, was like (the name) Shakespeare,
under taboo.

The Bacon hypothesis, it may be urged, solves a
few riddles. But what of the difficulties it involves ?
For example, it seems incredible that Bacon should
ever have resolved to disown his wonderful
offspring ; except indeed on the impossible
assumption that he, with his unrivalled knowledge
of human nature and command of all the arts of
expression — that he of all men was incapable of
appreciating the children of his brain. Here, once
more, my anonymous Essay suggests pertinent
considerations :

The emotional chill, which rarely fails to accompany
that creeping illness, old age, was one of these con
siderations. Another was the growth of a widespread
feeling . . . that English books would never be
" citizens of the world," that Latin was the " universal
language" and Latin books the only books that "would
live." But there must have been a " strain of rareness "
about Shakespeare's affection for poetry, which nothing
but a new and incompatible emotion could ever have
subdued. . . . With Bacon, affection for literature,
especially poetry, came (in time) long before affection
for anything like science. Among the various indications
of this, not the least interesting is a passage in the De
Augmentis Scientiarum (the latinised version, 1623, °f
the more noteworthy Advancement of Learning, 1605,
111

BACONIAN ESSAYS

already quoted): — " Poesy is at it were a dream of learning;
a thing sweet and varied and fain to be thought partly
divine, a quality which dreams also sometimes affect.
But now it is time for me to become fully awake, to lift
myself up from the earth, and to wing my way through
the liquid ether of philosophy and the sciences." Of a
certainty this beautiful passage was no mere flourish. . . .
It was a pathetic renunciation — the last possibly of a
series of more or less ineffectual renunciations — of poetry
and an ... aspiration after something else, neither
poetry, nor sc:ence, nor philosophy, which Bacon towards
the close of l.fe was wont to regard, so Rawley informs
us, as " his darling philosophy."

In other words, the Novum Organum, the potent
New Instrument that was to enlarge man's dominion
over every province of Nature, was Bacon's chief
solace for an unparalleled renunciation. Posterity,
he was determined, should never know that the
inventor of that Instrument had once revelled in the
play of the imagination, lest men of science should
have it in their power to pooh-pooh it as the fabric
of a brain that had invented A Midsummer -night's
Dream, and The Tempest.

Bacon and his friends (moved by the fascination
of the man, and pity for his fall) would naturally
destroy all tell-tale correspondence they could lay
hands on. Two private letters, and so far as we
know, two only, escaped the flames. One from a
bosom friend, Sir T. Mathew to Bacon (" Viscount
St. Alban "), bears the following postscript :
' The most prodigious wit that ever I knew of my
nation . . . is of your Lordship's name, though
he be known by another." This letter is given in
Dr. Birch's Letters, etc., of Francis Bacon, 1763.
Mathew himself made a Collection of Letters which
included many of his own to Bacon, but excluded

112

BEN JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE

the one just quoted, an exclusion dictated, I imagine,
by loyalty to his friend. Montague gives the letter
in his Bacon, but I have not found it in Spedding's
Work. The other escape was a letter of Bacon's to
another of his friends, the poet Davies, written some
twenty years earlier than Mathew's letter. In this
letter (to Davies), after commending himself to
Davies 's " love," and " the well using of my name . . .
if there be any biting or nibling at it, in that place "
(the Royal Court), Bacon concludes : " So desiring
you to be good to concealed poets, I continue,"
etc. My quotation is from a copy dated 1657
(bound up with Rawley's Resuscitatio), in which
" concealed poets " is in italics. Spedding gives
the words without the italics, and contents himself
with saying that he cannot explain them. For
another letting cut of the secret we have to thank
Aubrey's notebooks, which inform us that Bacon
was " a good poet but concealed, as appears by his
letters." Lastly there are the " Shakespeare " and
" Bacon " scribbles on the half-burnt MS. of Bacon's
:£ Device," A Conference of Pleasure. Possibly the
' letters " referred to by Aubrey, or evidence more
important, may yet be discovered in libraries un
explored, or explored only by orthodox searchers
intent on proving their own case. A library in so
unlikely a place as Valladolid seems, about eighty years
ago, to have possessed a First Folio of Shakespeare
which belonged to and was perhaps annotated by
Count Gondomar, a friend of Bacon's last years.*

* Mrs. Humphry Ward's Reminiscences, 1918, are, if memory fail not,
my authority here. [See Mrs. H. Ward's Recollections, pp. 255-258,
and an interesting letter, headed " Shakespeare Folios," and signed
" A. R. Watson," in The Times of April 13, 1922. Ed.]
H 113

BACONIAN ESSAYS

If Spain held such a treasure so recently what may
not Great Britain still hold ? Florence, for whose
Duke Sir T. Mathew had Bacon's Essays translated
into Italian, contained a copy of this translation not
long ago. But my searches there, and in Venice,
Milan, Padua, were tar too hurried to justify any
conclusion as to possible finds in Italy.

It is probably safe to take for granted that Bacon
was acquainted with Shakspere ; that the relation
between them began maybe as early as 1588, and
was concerned with playhouse property ; that this
property was held by Shakspere on trust for Bacon ;
and that it was sold, perhaps to the trustees, by
Bacon's orders some time before 1613.

The name of " Shakespeare " seems to have
made its first public appearance in print with Venus
and Adonis* a poem which was dedicated in
perfectly well-bred terms to an earl ; licensed
by an archbishop who had once been Bacon's
tutor ;| and expressed on its title page patrician
contempt for all things vulgar. By whose order
was the name Shakespeare printed at foot of its
Dedication to the Earl of Southampton ? In the
dearth of evidence the following guesses may pass
muster. They are put into an unhistorical present

*It cannot be proved that Shakspere ever spelt his name Shakespeare.
Shakspere seems to be the form he preferred. Probably however, both
he and his illiterate father Shaxper, Shaksper, Shakspear, or what not,
were anything but fastidious about spellings. Persons who happen
to be interested in the Shakspere family's fifty or sixty ways of
spelling their name will thank me for referring them to Sir George
Greenwood's Shakespeare Problem where they will find it stated that
" the form Shakespeare seems never to have been employed by them."
Among examples of destructive criticism of the Stratford theory, I know
not one so exhaustive and deadly as this of Sir G. Greenwood's. In
my Shakespeare-Bacon Essay, Shakspere, his irredeemably vulgar Will,
and other doings, are relegated to an appendix.

fWhitgift to wit. [Ed.]

114

BEN JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE

in order to show at a glance that they, or most of
them, are mere guess-work : — About 1592, Bacon
makes up his mind to publish Venus and Adonis.
Publication in his own name is vetoed by fear of
offending powerful friends, his uncle Burghley in
particular ; and he prefers pseudonymity to
anonymity. What he wants is a temporary mask
which he fully expects to be able to throw off before
long. In this mood, he calls on Richard Field, a
London printer hailing originally from Stratford,
and recommended to him by Sir John Harington,
whose Orlando Furioso Field has just printed.
Field happens to mention Shakspere which he
pronounces Shaxper. Bacon, already acquainted
with the young fellow of that name, decides that a
fictitious person, whose name he pronounces Shake
speare, shall be the putative father of his Poem.
Little dreams he, poet though he be, that he is
thereby preparing a human grave for that im
mortality of Fame (as poet) which he has begun
to anticipate for himself. The Poem appears in
1593 ; and is followed next year by Lucrece, fathered
by the same Shakespeare, and dedicated to the same
young Earl. Some years later, the name is
stereotyped by Meres 's Commonwealth of Wits,
where Shakespeare is mentioned seven or eight
times — as the English Ovid ; as one of our best
tragic and best comic poets ; as one of our most
'' wittie " and accomplished writers, and so forth.*
A few years later still, Bacon begins to be perplexed
what to do with his Shakespeare copyright, and his
perplexity rises with every advance in his profession.

* The allusion is to Francis Meres 's Palladis Tamia, 1598. [Ed.]

115

BACONIAN ESSAYS

Before succeeding to the Attorney-Generalship
he realises once for all that complications, pro
fessional, social, and various, have made it
impossible for him to think of fathering even a
selection of his poetical offspring . In despair to
escape from the impasse, he even talks of burning
MSS. But the threat is not carried out. Soon
after his melancholy downfall sympathetic and
admiring friends, notably the two Earls of Pembroke
and Montgomery — Southampton probably stood
aloof, memories of the Essex affair still rankling
in his mind — take counsel together, expostulate
with him, entreat him to let them bear all expenses
and responsibilities connected with publication,
and to clinch their argument tell him that they have
sounded the literary dictator of the day, Ben Jonson,
and got his promise to undertake the work of editing,
collecting, writing the necessary prefatory matter,
and so forth. Bacon yields consent on certain
conditions, the most embarrassing of which is that
the true authorship of the plays be for ever kept
dark — by means of " dissimulation," if dissimulation
will serve ; if not, then by " simulation/' i.e., the
lie direct.* The conditions are accepted with
misgivings on Jonson 's part. He is aware that he
will have no trouble with Mr. Shakspere's executors,
their interest in the copyrights involved being as
negligible as their testator's had been. And he

*See Bacon's Essay Of Simulation and Dissimulation, where he will
have it that dissimulation is a necessary consequence of " secrecy,"
its " skirts or traine, as it were." Simulation he holds to be " more
culpable . . . except it be in great and rare matters " where there is
" no Remedy." Jonson would be able to maintain that his Ode told no
lies direct — its attribution of " small Latin " being merely conditional,
and its " Swan of Avon " a purely imaginary bird.

116

BEN JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE

knows Heminge and Condell well enough to feel
certain that they will not have the smallest objection,
either to being assigned prominent places in the
forthcoming Book, or to his putting into their
mouths statements, etc., concerning Shakespeare,
which he himself would shrink from uttering.
But even so, the task is no sinecure.

Here guess-work ends.

The famous Folio, with its apparatus of Dedica
tion, prefatory Address, Ode, to " my beloved the
author," etc., made its appearance in 1623. The
Dedication intimates (with ironical emphasis on
the word " trifles ") that the author of these
" trifles " was dead, " he not having the fate
common with some to be exequutor to his owne
writings. . . . We have but collected them, and
done an office to the dead, to procure his Orphanes,
Guardians : without ambition either of selfe-profit,
or fame : onely to keepe the memory of so worthy
a Friend and Fellow alive, as was our Shakespeare."

The Address expresses a wish that the Author had
lived to set forth " his owne writings. But since
it hath bin ordain 'd otherwise, and he by death
departed from that right, we pray you do not envie
his Friends the office " of collection, etc. This
is followed by a statement, probably half jest, half
irony, that the Author uttered his thoughts with
such " easinesse, that wee have scarse received from
him a blot on his papers." That Heminge and
Condell had no hand in either Dedication or Address
is sufficiently proved by turns and phrases
characteristically Jonsonian. They, I suppose,
had given Jonson carte blanche, and he made use

117

BACONIAN ESSAYS

of the gift, in the interest of literature which might
otherwise have suffered irreparable loss. In this
way the fiction of Shakespeare's identity with
Shakspere was so plausibly documented, that
Jonson might have spared himself any further
trouble on that score. But either to make
assurance doubly sure, or to show his dexterity,
he set about the writing of his Ode as if the fiction
had not been planted already. Some of the Ode's
features need no further comment than they have
received. But the " small Latin " and " Swan of
Avon " allusions deserve a word or two more. Both
passages point at Shakspere and away from Shake
speare. What was their raison d'etre ? They were
exceptionally significant touches to an elaborate
system of camouflage, by which posterity, including
ourselves, was to be deluded.

Hitherto the accent has been too much on the
unessentials of the Ode, and far too little on its
beauties. No nobler contemporary appreciation
of Shakespeare has reached our ears, and that is a
cogent reason for gratitude to its author. Before
taking leave of him, I venture to make free with one
of his apostrophes. The lines would then run
thus :

Soule of the Age !

The applause ! delight ! the wonder of our Stage !
My Bacon rise !

In order to correct misapprehensions which may
have arisen through my having slipped into positive
statements, where ex hypothesi or conditional ones
might have been desired, I wish expressly to
disclaim any intention to dogmatise. Scientific

118

BEN JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE

certainty is out of the question. High probability
we may reach, perhaps have reached. But that is
the limit. That Bacon was Shakespeare, the only
Shakespeare that matters, is merely a working
hypothesis. Of other hypothetical Shakespeares
who have been put forward, a certain Earl of
Rutland would have deserved serious consideration,
had he been as able a writer as was his father-in-law,
Sidney. The only formidable competing hypo
thesis might seem to be that of a Great Unknown.
But this essentially is a confession of ignorance, and
some of its supporters are sceptics who amuse
themselves by falling upon every hypothesis in
turn.*

* As to Jonson and Shakespeare, see further the extract from an
article contributed by Mr. Smithson to The Nineteenth Century,
prefixed to his Essay on the Masque of Time Vindicated. I may be
allowed also to refer to my booklet Ben Jonson and Shakespeare
(Cecil Palmer, 1921).

119

BACON AND "POESY"

BACON AND "POESY'

BACONIANS hold that Francis Bacon concealed
his identity under an alias, and this perhaps is why
they are sometimes accused of slandering him, as
if the use of a pen-name were a crime and not the
perfectly legitimate ruse it actually is. Calumniators
of Bacon there exist no doubt, and some of them
are disposed to give Macaulay as an instance. Such
calumniation, however, is less likely to be found
among Baconians than among our orthodox
opponents, whose creed effectually bars the way
to any true appreciation of the great man. As for
Mr. William Shakspere of Stratford, his character
was, or should be, above suspicion. The Burbages,
exceptionally well-informed and credible witnesses,
testify that he was a " deserving ' man, and
Baconians accept that valuation of the man all the
more readily because there is no proof that he
himself ever laid claim to anything published or
known as Shakespeare's.

The serious criticism that Baconians have to face
may be considered under three heads : (i) The
testimony of Ben Jonson ; (ii) The popular notion
that Bacon was essentially a man of science ;

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BACONIAN ESSAYS

(iii) The absence of conspicuous and unmistakable
evidence of identity between Bacon and Shakespeare.

(i) In spite of the obvious inconsistency and
perversity of Ben Jonson's various utterances on
the subject, and the difficulty of believing that his
famous Ode of 1623 could refer except in part to a
death which had occurred in 1616, Ben Jonson is
commonly regarded as an absolutely conclusive
witness against us. An article of mine entitled
Ben Jonson's Pious Fraud, which appeared in the
Nineteenth Century and After of November 1913,
was an attempt at justification, and the attempt
shall not be repeated here. Some of my readers,
however, may care to know that in the December
(1913) number of the same review an angry opponent
charged me with having libelled Ben Jonson, about
the last thing of which I, a lifelong admirer of Ben
Jonson's, could really be guilty.

(ii) The second criticism we have to meet is
founded on the assumption that Science — Natural
Science — set her mark upon Bacon almost as soon
as he entered his teens. The main business of this
section will be to set forth arguments tending to
show that the mark which Bacon actually bore from
early youth to mature age, was the sign manual of
Poetry. In the nineties of the i6th century, Bacon
had serious thoughts of abandoning the legal
profession into which he had been thrust, and
devoting himself to literature in some form or other.
Towards the close of his life, when reviewing his
life's work, he regretfully confesses to having
wronged his " genius " in not devoting himself to
letters for which he was " born." In another letter

124

BACON AND " POESY '

of about the same date, he expresses the same
conviction : that in deserting literature for civil
affairs, he had done " scant justice " to his " genius."
These are not the words, nor this the attitude of a
man who thought and felt that he was born for
Natural Science. Possibly so, says an opponent,
but if Bacon were really born for literature, how
came it that his literary output, until he had passed
the mature age of 40, was so small ? If you,
Baconians, were not blinded by prejudice, you
would recognise in Bacon's literary inactivity during
youth and early manhood, something very like
proof of a preoccupation with Science. In replying
to this argument, I should begin by pointing out
that the words " literary inactivity " beg the
important question of concealment of identity.
Waiving this point for the moment, the presumption
of an early preoccupation with Science will be seen
at a glance to be incompatible with what we know of
Bacon's attainments in that direction. A speech
of his about 1592 in praise of " Knowledge " — a
word which covered everything knowable — contains
some of his finest and most characteristic thoughts.
The praise of knowledge, he declares, is the praise
of mind, since " knowledge is mind. . . . The
" minde itself is but an accident to knowledge, for
" knowledge is a double of that which is. The
" truth of being and the truth of knowing is all
" one." Then comes a rhetorical question re
miniscent of Lucretius 's suave mari, i.e. : " Is there
" any such happiness as for a man's mind to be
" raised above . . . the clowdes of error that turn
" into stormes of perturbations . . . Where he

125

BACONIAN ESSAYS

" may have a respect of the order of Nature " ?

" Knowledge," the speaker continues, should enable

us "to produce effects and endow the life of man

" with infinite commodities." At this point he

interrupts himself with the reflection that he " is

:< putting the garland on the wrong head," and then

proceeds to inveigh against the " knowledge that is

" now in use : All the philosophic of nature now

" receaved is eyther the philosophic of the Gretians

" or of the Alchemist." Aristotle's admiration of

the changelessness of the heavens is derided on the

naive assumption that there is a " like invariableness

u in the boweles of the earth, much spiritt in the

" upper part of the earth which cannot be brought

" into masse, and much massie body in the lower

;< part of the heavens which cannot be refined into

" spiritt."* Ancient astronomers are next taken

to task for failing to see " how evident it is that

11 what they call a contrarie mocion is but an abate-

" ment of mocion. The fixed starres overgoe

" Saturne and Saturne leaveth behind him Jupiter,

" and so in them and the rest all is one mocion,

" and the nearer the earth the slower." As for

modern astronomers, Copernicus for instance, and

Galileo, he dismisses them with contumely as

" new men who drive the earth about." Then he

chides himself for having forgotten that " know-

:< ledge itself is more beautiful than any apparel

* In this place the order of the words is slightly altered, but the
quoted words are Bacon's. Here also it may be well to observe that
Francis Bacon was not a pioneer in the revolt against what is called the
Aristotelian, but should be called the Scholastic Philosophy. Destructive
criticism of that philosophy began at least as early as the I3th century
and had already done its work so far as natural science was concerned
long before Francis Bacon took up the cry.

126

BACON AND " POESY '

" of wordes that can be put upon it " — a romantic
sentiment reminiscent of B iron's " angel know
ledge " in Love's Labour's Lost ; and a subsequent
passage is reminiscent of Montaigne. The con
clusion of the Speech is too fine to be abridged and
must be given in full :

" But indeede facilitie to beleeve, impatience to
" doubte, temeritie to assever, glorie to knowe, end
" to gaine, sloth to search, resting in a part of nature,
" these and the like have been the things which
" have forbidden the happy match between the
" minde of man and the nature of things, and in
[< place thereof have married it to vaine nocions and
!< blynde experiments. And what the posteritie
" of so honorable a match may be it is not hard to
" consider.* Therefore no doubte the sovereigntie
" of man lieth hid in knowledge, wherein many
" things are reserved which Kings with their
" treasures cannot buy, nor with their force com-
" mand : their spies and intelligences can give
" no news of them : their seamen and discoverers
" cannot saile where they grow. Now we governe
" nature in opinions but are thrall to her in
" necessities, but if we would be led by her in
" invention we should command her in action."

These are not the views nor is this the accent of
one who has been devoting himself to natural
science. The utterance is that of a genius for letters

* This always reminds me of The Tempest and its projected match
between Ferdinand, the unsophisticated mind of man, and Miranda,
symbol of the new method of nature study. Naples, the New City of
the Tempest, would thus stand for the model city or state expected to
spring up as a result of the New Method. The New Atlantis of Bacon
was another state of this kind.

127

BACONIAN ESSAYS

whose preoccupation has been the apparelling of
beautiful thoughts in beautiful words.

The above Speech, which is part of an entertain
ment called a Conference of Pleasure, expresses
intuitions that come from the very soul of the poet-
speaker. Ample confirmation of this is to be found
in the Advancement of Learning — Learning here
being the synonym of Knowledge in the Speech —
published in 1605. That work aimed at promoting
" natural science " with a view above all to scientific
discovery and the increase of man's power over
nature. It teems with practical allusions to and
quotations from the classical poets, particularly
Ovid and Vergil. It was dedicated to James the
First, a prince — to quote the words of its author—
" invested with the learning and universality* of
a philosopher." In a passage dealing with the art
of medicine the author deems it very much " to
the purpose " to note that poets were wont " to
" conjoin music and medicine in Apollo, because
" the office of medicine is but to tune this curious
" harp of man's body and reduce it to harmony."
Another passage asserts that the wild fancies of
quacks or empirics were anticipated and discredited
by the poets in the fable of Ixion. What we call
endowment of research, he, student of belles lettres
that he is, regards as provision for the making of
experiments appertaining to Vulcan and Daedalus.
Students of Natural Science will search the book in
vain for evidence of direct familiarity with any

* In a letter to his uncle, 1592, Bacon wrote:"! have taken all
knowledge to be my province." May this explain the " universality "
with which James I is here credited ?

128

BACON AND " POESY "

branch of the subject. In the opinion of its author,
natural history — the natural history of 1605 — left
little to be desired so far as normal phenomena
were concerned. He ruled that the " opinion of
Copernicus touching the rotation of the earth "
was repugnant to " natural philosophy." The
notion that air had or could have weight is dismissed
as preposterous. Among his observations on
history there is no suggestion of the circulation of
the blood. He sums up Gilbert in terms of
contempt, his own contribution to the subject of
magnetism being : u There is formed in everything
" a double nature of good, the one as everything
" is a total or substantive in itself, the other as it
" is a part or member of a greater or more general
" form. Therefore we see the iron in particular
" sympathy moveth to the loadstone, but yet if it
" exceed a certain quantity, it forsaketh the affection
[< to the loadstone and like a good patriot moveth
" to the earth which is the region or country of
" massy bodies."

One of the most telling arguments against the
presumption that Bacon had interested himself in
natural science to the exclusion of almost everything
else, is the staggering value he put upon " poesy )3
as compared with " philosophy " or science at large.
Fascinated by the wonderful discoveries of explorers
in the material globe, he pictures knowledge, all
knowledge, as an intellectual globe, which he then
divides into three great parts or continents, History,
Poesy, and Philosophy. Only a poet could have
made such a distribution as that. For the continent
allotted to Philosophy, as he understands it, embraced

I 129

BACONIAN ESSAYS

not only all the natural sciences, but also ethics,
politics, mathematics, metaphysics, and many
another subject besides. It would be easy, out of
the Advancement alone, to multiply refutations of
the theory that Bacon 's early and middle life were
devoted to natural science. The only difficulty is
to select.

Before changing the subject it may be well to
give the substance of a foot-note to the present
writer's Shakespeare-Bacon, 1899 (Swan Sonnens-
chein) : " When Bacon came to review his early
" estimate of the importance of poetry to science
" or knowledge, he was evidently dissatisfied. In
" the Advancement (1605) he had claimed that ' for
" * the expressing of affections, passions, corruptions,
11 ' and customs, we are beholding to poet more
" ' than to philosophers.' In the corresponding
" place of the revised edition (1623) ne drops this
" claim. In the Advancement again Poesy is stated
"to be one of the three * goodly fields '* (history
" and experience being the other two), ' where grow
" ' observations concerning the several characters
" ' and tempers of men's natures and dispositions.' 3
In the corresponding place of the revised version
this commendation is materially lowered, on the
ground that poets are so apt to exceed the truth.
The revised version, in short, goes so far towards
cheapening Poesy and Imagination as to suggest
that if the author had not been hampered by his
earlier utterances, he would have deposed both

* These same goodly fields had been so diligently cultivated by Bacon
that his insight into human nature was probably unequalled by any of
his contemporaries, whilst his mastery of all arts of expression enabled
him to portray it as it has never been portrayed before or since.

130

BACON AND " POESY '

from the high places they still were permitted to
occupy in his system.

That Bacon's relations with " Poesy " were
extremely intimate and at the same time anxiously
concealed from the public, his letters afford con
vincing evidence. Writing to the Earl of Essex
in 1594-5, when his affairs were in evil plight, he
assures that generous friend that " the waters of
Parnassus " are the best of consolation. In a
letter to Lord H. Howard he writes : " We both
have tasted of the best waters to knit minds
together " — the allusion being of course to the
same Parnassian waters. In an open letter (1604)
to the Earl of Devonshire, he confesses to having
written a sonnet addressed to the Queen herself
on a memorable occasion, and then, by way of
proving his generosity when the welfare of Essex
was at stake, directs special attention to the fact
that this sonnet (affair) involved a publishing and
declaring of himself — in other words a dropping of
the mask that screened him as poet from the eyes
of the public. That such was his meaning is
explained by a confidential letter to a poetical
friend in which he ranks himself among " concealed"
poets. Moreover, this was evidently only one of
several letters in which Bacon confessed himself a
concealed poet, for John Aubrey tells us that Bacon
;< was a good poet, but concealed as appears by his
letters." Whether any of these other letters still
exist is to be doubted, for the piety of Sir Tobie
Mathew, Sir Thomas Meautys, and other devoted
friends of the concealed poet, would naturally
destroy all they could lay hands on.

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The external evidence that Bacon was essentially
a poet is a theme so large that only a portion of it
can be given here. In 1626, the year of Bacon's
death, John Haviland printed for Sir William
Rawley thirty-two monumenta insignia expressive
of adoration and grief for the great man who had
just passed away.* Rawley, the editor, would take
care that no published offering to the Manes
Verulamiani should impart his Master's secret to
persons who were not in it already ; and this may
help to explain why all the thirty-two offerings are
in Latin, not in the vulgar tongue. In his preface
to the collection, Rawley informs his readers that
the monumenta were a selection merely from the
numbers which had been entrusted to him— ;c very
many, and those of the very best having been kept
back by him " (plurimos, enim, eosque optimos
versus apud me contineo). How tantalising! He
does not even hint at his reason for such wholesale
suppression of masterpieces. One of the thirty
mourners declares that Bacon was a Muse more
choice than any of the famous Nine. Another
considers him " the hinge of the literary world."
Another bids the fountain of Hippocrene weep
black mud, and warns the Muses that their bay-
trees would go out of cultivation now that the laurel-
crowned Verulam had left this planet. Others call
upon Apollo and the Muses to weep for the loss of
the great Bacon. Another laments the disaster
that has befallen " us nurselings of the Muses/'
and calls Bacon " the Apollo of our choir." Another

* " Insignia haec amoris et maestitiae monumenta." These were
published by Rawley under the title of Manes Verulamiani, in 1626,
the year of Bacon's death. [Ed.]

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BACON AND " POESY '

exclaims that " the morning-star of the Muses, the
favourite of Apollo, has f alien, " and supposes
that Melpomene in particular is inconsolable for
the loss of him. Another declares that Bacon had
placed all the Muses under obligations impossible
to estimate. Another laments him as " the Tenth
Muse . . . ornament of the choir," and imagines
that Apollo can never have been so unhappy before.
Another regards Bacon as the delicium of his country.
Another calls him the choir leader of the Pierides.
Another, No. 24, will have it that Ovid, had he lived,
would have been better qualified than any other
poet to lay an acceptable offering on the tomb of
Bacon. Why Ovid should have been pitched upon
is not obvious. Perhaps the opinion of Francis
Meres, that " the sweet witty soul of Ovid lives in
mellifluous and honytongued Shakespeare, witness his
Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his Sugred Sonnets,
among his private friends, " may have determined
his choice. Here it should be mentioned that a
previous contributor had hinted not obscurely at
Bacon's authorship of " some elegant love pieces
or poems " — quicquid venerum politiorum.* Another

* S. Collins, Rector of King's College, Cambridge, writes, in the
Manes Verulamiani :

Henricus neque Septimus tacetur,
Et quicquid venerum politiorum, et
Si quid praeterii inscius libellum
Quos magni peperit vigor Baconi.

Where the appended translation reads: " Nor must the Seventh Henry
fail of mention, or if aught there be of more cultured loves, aught that
I unwitting have passed over of the works which the vigor of great
Bacon hath produced." A note explains " quicquid venerum poli
tiorum " as " stories of love more spiritually interpreted," and refers
to Bacon's De Sapientia Veterum.

The author of No. XVIII of the Manes tells us that " the Day Star
of the Muses hath fallen ere his time ! Fallen, ah me, is the very care
and sorrow of the Clarian god [Phoebus to wit], thy darling, nature and
the world's — Bacon : aye — passing strange — the grief of very Death.

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BACONIAN ESSAYS

contributor exclaims : " Couldst thou thyself, O
Bacon, suffer death, thou who wert able to confer
immortality on the Muses themselves ? " The last
of the thirty-two selected contributors is Thomas
Randolph, a notable member of the group of wits
known as the tribe of Ben. After having expatiated
on the grief of himself and his fellow-poets for the
irreparable loss they had just sustained, and borne
his testimony to Bacon's intimacy with the melodious
goddesses (Camaenae), Randolph in the manner
affected by contemporary poets and men of letters,
proceeds to eulogise Bacon as the inventor of new
scientific methods, of keys to Nature's labyrinth,
etc., and finishes : <:< But we poets can add nothing
to thy fame. Thou thyself art a singer, and
therefore singes t thine own praises." (At nostrce
tibi nulla ferent encomia musce, Ipse cants, laudes et
canis inde tuas).

To sum up, the outstanding impression left on
the mind by Randolph and his friends is that they
regarded Bacon, not merely as a poet, but as the
foremost poet of the age ; and this impression is
confirmed by the reflection that few if any of the
contributors knew enough of science to be capable
of appreciating the work of really scientific pioneers
such as Harriot, Gilbert, Harvey, and others whose
names are onspicuously absent from the roll of
Bacon's admirers.

What privilege did not the crule Destiny [Atropos, one of the Fates]
claim ? Death would fain spare, and yet she [Atropos] would not.
Melpomene, chiding, would not suffer it, and spake these words to the
stern goddesses [the Parcce, or Fates] : * Never was Atropos truly
heartless before now ; keep thou all the world, only give my Phoebus
back.' " It is to be noted that the Muse who here speaks of Bacon as
her " Phoebus," or Apollo, is Melpomene the Muse of Tragedy. [Eo.]

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(iii) The remaining difficulty — that of establishing
a relation between Bacon and Shakespeare — -has
now to be dealt with. It may be well to begin by
directing attention to the significant omission of the
name of Jonson, head of the tribe of Ben, from the
collection of eulogies we have just been considering.
Adequate explanation of this conspicuous omission
is almost impossible without the aid of the Bacon
hypothesis. If any contribution of Jonson 's had
appeared in the publication, the secret would have
been out. Even as it was, his executors almost
disclosed it when, in 1640-1, they sanctioned
publication of those tell-tale notebooks in which
Jonson records that Bacon " had performed that
in our tongue which might be compared or
preferred either to insolent Greece or haughty
Rome/' an appreciation almost identical with
that contained in his famous Ode to Shakespeare.
It is well to remember in this connection that
Jonson on Bacon's sixtieth birthday had apostro
phised him as an enchanter or " mystery '
worker.

Among other arguments which tend to identify
the names of Bacon and Shakespeare, the following
seem worthy of mention : (a) Poesy, as we know,
constituted one of the three continents into which
Bacon in his Advancement of Learning, mapped out
the whole " globe " of the knowable. To ignore
dramatic poetry altogether would have given rise
to inconvenient curiosity. Compelled, therefore,
to give it a name, Bacon rejects the natural word
" dramatic" and adopts instead the out-of-the-way
word " representative." What he says, moreover,

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BACONIAN ESSAYS

about dramatic poetry — in the proper place for
saying it — is apparently intended to carry on the
suggestion that he was almost a stranger to dramatic
performances, a suggestion contradicted by passages
in other sections of the same work. For instance,
on handling what he calls the " Georgics of the
mind," he describes dramatic poetry in terms so
appropriate to the best dramatic poetry of the period,
that one is almost forced to say to oneself : Here
surely, Bacon must have been thinking of Shake
speare! The passage will bear quoting at length.
!< In poetry," it runs, " no less than in history,
" we may find painted forth with great life how
" affections are kindled and excited ; how they
" work, how they vary, how they gather and fortify,
" how they do fight and encounter one with another
1 . . . how to set affection against affection, and
" to master one by another, even as we use to hunt
;c beast with beast." His leave-taking, it may be
added, of the whole theme or subject of poetry is
effected by an ironical : " But it is not good to stay
too long in the theatre," which could only be fully
appreciated I suppose, by his personal friends.

(b) Nowhere, I believe, in any extant writing
of Bacon's, whether letter, essay, or notebook, is
there any mention of Shakespeare, and a like
reticence is observed in the Rawley collection just
cited. Assume for the moment that Shakespeare
was the proper name of the man of Stratford, not
the pseudonym of Bacon, or, to put it in another
way, that Shakespeare and Bacon were two separate
persons, and what is the result ? We should have
to concede that of two poets, both interested in

136

BACON AND " POESY '

things dramatic, both supreme judges and keen
observers of human nature, its affections, passions,
corruptions, and customs — that of two such poets,
one, and that one Bacon, must have forbidden the
very mention of the other, and this, too, for no
discoverable reason.

(c) Bacon (in 1605) held that the chief function
of poetry was " to give some shadow of satisfaction
to the mind of man in those points wherein the
nature of things doth deny it." He ranked poets
among the very best of ethical teachers in virtue
of their insight into human character as modifiable
" by the sex, by the age, by the region, by health
and sickness, by beauty and deformity " and the
like ; and again ... u by sovereignty, nobility,
obscure birth, riches, want, magistracy, privateness,
prosperity, adversity, constant fortune, variable
fortune, rising per saltum, per gradus and the like."
Here again many an open-minded reader must have
felt moved to reflect that he was on the track, if not
in the presence, of Shakespeare.

(d) It is clear that Bacon as he grew older, came
to think less and less highly of imaginative work.
The mere fact that Shakespeare ultimately
abandoned his poetical offspring to chance, points,
it surely would seem, to a similar change of view.

(e) Though many of the coincidences between
Bacon and Shakespeare may be explained as
manifestations of the Time Spirit, some of them
strongly suggest direct contact even when taken
singly. Take for example, the misquotation of
Aristotle by Shakespeare in Troilus and Cressida,

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BACONIAN ESSAYS

and by Bacon in the Advancement of Learning*
Take, again, the curious resemblance between the
Winter's Tale and the Essay of Gardens. Spedding's
comment on this passage in the Essay runs :
' The scene in Winter's Tale where Perdita presents
the guests with flowers . . . has some expressions
which, if the Essay had been printed somewhat
earlier, would have made me suspect that Shake
speare had been reading it."f

(f) Again, certain views to which Bacon gave
expression in the Essay of Deformity, seem implicit
in Shakespeare's Richard the Third. Richard has
his " revenge of nature " for the ill turn she did him
in making him deformed. He is also " extreme
bold," ever on the watch to " observe the weakness "
of others. His deformity, moreover, must, it would
seem, be supposed to have " quenched jealousy '
in those personages who, if he had been comely,
would have foreseen and thwarted his ambitious
designs.

(g) In the course of some interesting observations
on the writing of history considered as an art, Bacon
confesses to a liking for ready-made outlines or
plots, so that the artist might be free to concentrate
his powers on the more congenial work of enrich
ment " with counsels, speeches, and notable
particularities. " The faulty plots of many of
Shakespeare's plays imply that he also grudged

* But " moral philosophy," the words used both by " Shakespeare "
and Bacon, are the correct translation of rrjs TTOAITI/OJS. " Political
philosophy " would have been a wrong translation. Moreover,
Erasmus, before " Shakespeare " and Bacon, had rightly translated
TToAm/CTjs by " moral philosophy." [Ed.]

t Items (e), (f), (g) and (h) are lifted without material alteration from
my Bacon-Shakespeare Essay.

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BACON AND " POESY '

the labour of construction and delighted in
decoration and enrichment.

(h) Several editions of Bacon's Essays seem to
have been published without their author's consent.
Shakespeare also seems to have been preyed upon
by piratical publishers. Wherever concealment
of authorship is a desideratum, prosecution by law
must needs be difficult if not impossible.

(i) Whenever Shakespeare, as we know him in
quartos and folios, stands in need of an interpreter,
no contemporary author is so often consulted by
orthodox critics as Francis Bacon.

(k) Compare the Merchant of Venice, which the
editor of the First Folio rather enigmatically calls
comedy, with Bacon's Essay of Usury. The primary
intention of the play was to amuse or delight ;
that of the Essay being of course to instruct. But
the play appears to me to have combined utile with
duke, instruction with pleasure ; and the lesson
as I understand it was this : — usury instead of being
forbidden by the State, should be recognised and
regulated, on the ground that unconditional for
feiture of pawns or pledges — the usual alternative
to usury — is apt to bear more harshly on the
borrower. The crisis of the play arrives near the
end of Act IV, Sc. i, where the Doge pronounces
judgment. The instant and immediate effect upon
Shylock is positively crushing ; he would rather
die than submit. But the accent of despair is
quickly succeeded by the words : <:< I am content,"
although one of the conditions just introduced by
Antonio is that the wretched man Shylock should

139

BACONIAN ESSAYS

11 presently become a Christian." The change of
mood is so amazing that we can hardly believe our
senses. What can be the explanation ? we ask
ourselves. Between the judgment pronounced by
the Doge and Shylock's accent of despair, Antonio
has thrown in these words : " So please my lord
the Duke and all the Court to quit the fine for one
half of his goods, I am content ; so he [Shy lock]
will let me have the other half in use, to render it
upon his death unto the gentleman that lately
stole his daughter." To us the words may seem
insignificant. But Shy lock was a sort of personifi
cation of usury, and to him they meant nothing
less than victory — victory over his arch-enemy
Antonio, the head and front of the anti-usury party
in Venice.

Students of Bacon will remember that his Essay
of Usury is a plea for State recognition and regulation
of interest or " use," on utilitarian grounds similar
to those suggested in the comedy.

But may not this harmony between the Merchant of
Venice and the Essay have been accidental, especially
as there was an interval of some twenty -five years
between the appearance of the Essay in its present
form and our Merchant of Venice ? My answer is
that the Essay was based, as we know from one of
Bacon's own letters, on " some short papers of mine
touching usury, how to grind the teeth of it," etc.,
and these short papers may well have been written
as early as 1598, when Bacon himself was in the
clutches of the money-lender.*

* The story of the Merchant of Venice is, as is well known, founded
on the Pecorone of Ser Giovanni, Day IV, Novel I. See my Is there a
Shakespeare Problem ? p 91. et seq. [Eo.]

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BACON AND " POESY '

(1) The relation between the play of Hamlet
and the Essay of Revenge is quite as close as that
between the Essay of Usury and the Merchant of
Venice. A reader who should consider the tragedy
of Hamlet with a single eye to conduct, will hardly
escape the reflection that its lesson or moral is
summed up to perfection in one of Bacon's Essays,
viz., the one which treats of revenge : * They
doe but trifle with themselves that labour in past
matters. There is no man doth a wrong for the
wrong's sake ; but thereby to purchase himself e
Profit, or Pleasure, or Honour, or the like. There
fore why should I be angry with a Man, for
loving himselfe better than mee ? . . . Vindicative
persons live the Life of Witches : who, as they are
Mischievous, so end they Infortunate." Such in the
end was the noble Hamlet's fate. Once possessed
by the devil of revenge, he becomes a sort of upas or
plague-centre, and perishes in a sorry and most
unlucky broil.

(m) The existence of striking harmonies between
Shakespeare and Bacon was detected by foreign
students fifty years ago and more. Professor Kuno
Fischer, for example, wrote : " To the parallels
between them [i.e. Bacon and Shakespeare] belong
the similar relation of both to Antiquity, their
affinity to the Roman mind, and their divergence
from the Greek. . . . Bacon would have man
studied in his individual capacity as a product of
nature and history, in every respect determined
by ... external and internal conditions. And
exactly in the same spirit has Shakespeare under
stood man and his destiny." Gervinus in his

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BACONIAN ESSAYS

Commentaries observes : ' In Bacon's works we
find a number of moral sayings and maxims of
experience from which the most striking mottoes
might be drawn for every Shakespearean play, aye,
for all his principal characters, testifying to a
remarkable harmony in their comprehension of
human nature/' One more quotation, of like
import and from an author with no partiality for
Baconian views, may not be superfluous.
Professor J. Nichol, after having ruled out the
Baconian heresy by recording his opinion that
Bacon did not write Shakespeare, proceeds : " But
there is something startling in the like magnificence
of speech in which they [Bacon and Shakespeare]
find voice for sentiments often as nearly identical
when they anticipate as when they contravene the
manners of thought and standards of action that
prevail in our age." (Francis Bacon, Vol. I, 1888).

(n) Only a lawyer by education would have hit
upon the technicality which is the nucleus of the
8yth Sonnet of Shakespeare. The technicality is
not one which an amateur interested in common law
proceedings would be likely to pick up, for it belongs
to the art of conveyancing. Part of my time, fifty
years ago, was spent in the chambers of a con
veyancer. But for that early training I might still
have been able to see intellectual beauty in the well-
known bust of Shakespeare at Stratford ; for my
suspicion of the popular legend originated in the
conviction that the Shakespeare who matters must
have been bred up a lawyer.*

* See also the forty-sixth Sonnet. [Ed.]

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BACON AND " POESY '

(o) In the year 1867, Mr. John Bruce discovered
in Northumberland House, which then stood in
the Strand, a bundle of Elizabethan manuscripts,
the outermost sheet of which contains a mis
cellaneous list of Elizabethan writings, the majority
of which are unquestionably identified with work
previously known to have been due to Bacon.
The minority consists of five pieces, three of
which may, for anything we know to the contrary,
have been enriched if not entirely written
by him. The two remaining pieces figure in the
list as " Rychard the Second " and " Rychard the
Third." The significance of this association with
work of which there can be no doubt that Bacon
was the author, is greatly increased by the fact that
the cover or sheet which bears the list of contents
is bescribbled at random with the names " ffrancis
Bacon " and " William Shakespeare."*

Mr. Spedding evidently missed what seems to
me the true significance of this double association —
the combination of titles in the list of contents, and
the mixture of the names Bacon with Shakespeare
in the scribbles. But one or two of his observations
on the subject of this singular find are interesting
enough. He notes, for example, that the name
;< Shakespeare " in the scribbles is " spelt in every
case as it was always printed in those days, and
not as he himself in any known case wrote it."
Another of Spedding Js observations is that the
contained manuscripts, list or lists of contents, and
scribbles, all belong to a period " not later then the
reign of Elizabeth."

? See my chapter on " The Northumberland Manuscript." Post p. 187:

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BACONIAN ESSAYS

(p) Attentive readers of almost any biography
of Francis Bacon will be surprised to learn that the
record of his achievements begins so late. Singularly
precocious, he has already reached the ripe age —
so these biographies tell us — of 36, before anything
worthy of mention can be placed to his credit except
a small tract or booklet of confessedly unripe Essays,
Religious Meditations , and Coulers of Good and Evil.
That there must be something very wrong with the
record is proved by the fact that already in 1597,
the date of the booklet, everything that came, or was
suspected of coming, from the pen of Bacon, was in
such request that he was compelled, as he tells his
brother, to publish these crudities lest they should
be stolen or mutilated by piratical printers. His
first really notable work, according to the conven
tional record, is the Advancement of Learning, which
was not published until two-thirds of his life was
behind him. By far the greater part of the
remaining third was so absorbed by public affairs,
and, after his fall, so harassed by ill-health and
private worries, that no literary fruit could have
been looked for. Yet its closing years were marked
by an unparalleled outburst of literary activity—
an outburst which, like the fear of piratical printers
expressed in his letter of 1597, means, I take it,
that his youth and early manhood had been devoted
to the art and practice of literature. Shelley's
emphatic assertion that Bacon was a poet leaves
the puzzle still unsolved. So, perhaps, does the
discovery of harmony after harmony between Bacon
and Shakespeare.

But the tension will begin to relax so soon as we

144

BACON AND " POESY '

shall have taken time to grasp the significance on
these two facts : first, that the dramas attributed
to Shakespeare (spelt as it was always printed in
those days*) cannot be fitted into the life of the man
Shakspere who ended his life, and was evidently
content to end it, in what was then a small and rather
squalid country town : and second, that the evidence
— Ben Jonson's — which is commonly supposed to
establish the Stratford case, turns out to be in itself
an enigma rather than a solution.

The riddle is almost read when we shall have
satisfied ourselves that Bacon was not only a poet
but a " concealed " poet, and that by his own
confession. And by the time we have been shown
Sir T. Mathew's remark, in his letter to Viscount
St. Alban : " The most prodigious . . . wit I
know . . . is of your Lordship's name though
he be known by another," the true and only solution
stands revealed.

This letter was written, I imagine, just at the
time when the First Folio (of Shakespeare) was the
talk of literary London. It was excluded from Sir
Tobie Mathew's own Collection of Letters (published
1660), but seems to have lived on, in seclusion no
doubt, till 1762, by which time all thought about
the " concealed poet's " potent art had long been
buried with his bones. Basil Montagu gives a
copy of it, but Spedding, if I mistake not, ignores
it.

This is by no means all the evidence that a better
advocate than I could bring to bear on the question
in dispute. But no stronger guarantee for the truth

* Not quite " always " — there were some exceptions. [Eo.]
K 145

BACONIAN ESSAYS

of the Bacon hypothesis can be demanded than that
it should harmonise a large number of otherwise
inexplicable data ; and this demand I hope I may
have done something to meet.

For the rival hypothesis, of course, there is much
to be said. Never was Golden Bough the child or
offspring of an ilex oak. Yet Vergil's beautiful tale
for ever adorns the lovely Avernian lake. Stratford-
on-Avon was even more to the Shakespeare legend,
and thereby may likewise be immortalised. " Doth
any man doubt that if there were taken out of
men's minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false
valuations, imaginations as one would, and the
like, but it would leave the minds of a number
of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy
and indisposition and unpleasing to themselves ?"

146

THE TEMPEST" AND ITS
SYMBOLISM

" THE TEMPEST " AND ITS
SYMBOLISM *

The Tempest in the form in which it originally
left the author's hand belongs, it would seem, with
A Winter's Tale, to the period 1607-1610, nearer
probably to the 7 than the 10. The ground-plot
may well have been adapted, as Herr Dorer
suggested, from a story which ultimately got into
a Spanish collection of Tales, called Winter Nights.
Of the actual plot it is not necessary to say much.
Twelve years before the opening of the play,
Prospero, poet and enchanter, the victim of a
wicked cabal, found himself and his daughter, then
a mere babe, stranded on a barren island. For
tunately part of his library, consisting of volumes
which he prized above everything else in the world,
except Miranda, had somehow been allowed to
accompany him. In the beloved society of these
books and Miranda he managed to pass the time
until relief came in the shape of a commotion brought
about by his own consummate art.

The true centre of the play, the Sun about which
its system revolves, is Miranda. It is for her sake,
hers alone, that Prospero displays, and then for ever
renounces, an art which he dearly loves and is
certain he will miss.

*This Essay was written by Mr. Smithson in the year 1912.

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BACONIAN ESSAYS

Now there is no evidence fit to be trusted that
Shakspere, or, to give him the title he coveted, Mr.
William Shakspere of Stratford-upon-Avon, gentle
man, was ever a lover of books, none that he ever
possessed, or would have cared to possess anything
in the shape of a library. Among the various
specific bequests of his essentially vulgar Will no
such thing as a book is even suggested. About
1613 Shakspere exchanged the mentally stimulating
atmosphere of London for the deadly dullness of a
mean provincial town. His departure, unwept,
unsung, and seemingly not even noticed by any
member of the literary world he is supposed to have
adorned, may have been demanded by keen personal
interest in an enclosure scheme which was then
agitating the petty community at Stratford. There
is no evidence, no hint even, that it was due to ill-
health, and it certainly cannot have been due (as
the whole action of Prospero was) to preoccupation
with the marriage of a daughter. Daughters he
had, it is true, and the younger of them (Judith)
married one Thomas Quiney a vintner or tavern-
keeper, son of Richard Quiney (an old friend of the
Shaksperes) who, or whose widow, also kept a
tavern. But Judith's marriage took place long after
her father's retirement from London must have
been resolved on. Shakspere's highest ambition —
Mr. Sidney Lee tells us — was to restore among his
fellow-townsmen the family repute which his father's
misfortunes had imperilled. This father it seems
was a chandler or general dealer, not more illiterate
probably than others of the family, who began life
in a humble way and afterwards came to grief.

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" THE TEMPEST " AND ITS SYMBOLISM

If, as is likely, his debts were inconsiderable, his
ambitious son should have found little difficulty
in restoring the family repute, such as it was. The
fat-witted lines — Good friend for Jesus sake forbear,
To dig the dust enclosed here, etc. — which this same
son seems to have selected, or composed, or ordered,
for his monument, though quite out of keeping with
mountains of surmise, are entirely in keeping with
all we can properly be said to know of the man.
Yet this is the man who is said, on eminent authority,
to have conceived and executed The Tempest, and
what is more to my immediate purpose, to have
drawn Prospero in his own image ! Belief in this
might have been possible, had we known next to
nothing about Shakspere or his environment. But
the finds of a Halliwell-Phillipps (to take him as a
type) have had an effect which the industrious finder
certainly did not foresee or intend.

More than thirty years ago the writer came to the
double conclusion, (a) that whoever Shakespeare
might have been, Shakspere was not the man ; (b)
that of all the known poets of that day, it was Bacon
and Bacon alone who seemed to possess the necessary
qualifications. Many of the reasons — none of them
beholden to cypher, cryptogram or hocus-pocus
of any kind— which made for that conclusion are
set forth in a little book, Bacon- Shakespeare, An
Essay (signed E. W. S., Rome, but published, 1900,
in London). Most of the reasons there given have,
however, no very definite relation to The Tempest
and its symbolism.

Shelley saw and asserted that Bacon was a poet.
But students of Bacon need no Shelley to inform

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BACONIAN ESSAYS

them that Bacon was indeed a poet. His earlier
work betrays him. Even the Advancement of
Learning (1605), tinctured as it is by the pedantic
style then coming into fashion, holds just the same
truth in solution. To many such students, apology
is due for labouring the point. My excuse is the
existence of a strong prepossession to the contrary.
By what seems to have been an oversight on the
part of Bacon, his executors and intimate friends,
a letter of his to Sir J. Davies, also a poet, has come
down to us, unedited for the public. In this letter
Bacon confesses himself a poet, ranks himself in
effect amongst concealed poets . Aubrey too, thanks
probably to a similar oversight, lets us into the same
secret that Bacon was a concealed poet. Of Bacon's
affection for poetry the product (Bacon himself calls
it the work or play) of the imagination, there is no
room for doubt. It other evidence were wanting,
the Sapientia Veterum (1609) would almost suffice
to prove it. As Porphyry's reverence for the elder
gods is deducible from his attempt to extract
philosophy out of the oracles of antiquity, so Bacon's
reverent affection for poetry manifests itself in that
elaborate attempt of his to distil philosophy out of
what is at bottom a medley of poetical fables. That
Bacon, like Prospero, delighted in poesis (making)
is equally clear. Poesy, he says in the De Augmentis
— Poesy is a dream of knowledge (or culture), a thing
sweet and varied and that would fain be held partly
divine. . . . But now it is time for me to awake (ut
evigilem) and cleave the liquid ether of philosophy,
etc. This passage, written after 1605, obviously
means more than affection for poetry the product.

152

" THE TEMPEST " AND ITS SYMBOLISM

Only a poet who loved to dream, only a poet for
whom the awaking was fraught with pain, however
glorious the promise of the dawn, would have
written that.

Bacon again, like Prospero, was a lover of books,
and happy like him, in the possession of a well-
filled library (at Gray's Inn, or Gorhambury, or
both). He was an omniverous reader, tasting some
books (mathematical and astronomical, for example),
swallowing others, chewing and digesting a few. His
biographer says of him : He was a great reader,
but no plodder upon books.

About 1607-9, Bacon (in one of his impetus
philosophici) imagined that at last he really had hit
upon an infallible Method of vastly enlarging man's
dominion over Nature. The problem was how to
launch this Method to the best advantage. Knowing
only too well that he would receive no encourage
ment from living experts in science — the scientists
who had arrived as distinguished from those who
had not yet started — he fixed his hopes on ingenuous,
open-minded Youth. But this is a prosaic way of
looking at the matter, and Bacon was a poet. To
him the desideratum presented itself as a marriage,
a marriage between his darling philosophy, as he
was wont to call it, and an ideal husband. In the
Redargutio Philosophiarum men are exhorted to
devote themselves to the task of bringing about a
chaste and legitimate wedlock between the mind and
nature. In the Sapientia Veterum the same idea
appears in a different form : facultates illas duas
Dogmaticam et Empiricam adhuc non bene conjunctas

153

BACONIAN ESSAYS

et copulatas fuisse* In the Delineatio (c. 1607) he
writes : We trust we have constructed a bride-bed for
the marriage of Man's Mind with the Universe.
The same idea (hardly as yet an obsession) makes
one of its earliest appearances in a Speech in Praise
of Knowledge, forming part of a dramatic jeu d' esprit
entitled A Conference of Pleasure (1592). In this
Speech several things are said to have forbidden the
happy match between the mind of man and the nature
of things, and in place thereof have married it to vain
notions and blind experiments. And what the issue
of so honourable a match may be it is not hard to
consider. With the actual merits of the Method
we are but distantly concerned here. What is of
importance here is the certainty that Bacon would
lose no opportunity of repudiating every suggestion
that his beloved child owed anything to the
imagination. It was an usual speech of his
lordship's, says his biographer, that his Natural
History is the world as God made it, and not
as men have made it, for it hath nothing of the
imagination.

By this time the inner meaning of The Tempest,
and also the editorial reason for thrusting it into the
leading place of the First Folio, may have become
apparent. Miranda stands for Bacon's Darling
Philosophy, and the ingenuous young Ferdinand
for the unsophisticated mind of man, the human
intellect cleared and delivered from idols, particularly
idols of the theatre. The issue of so auspicious a
match is left, in The Tempest, as in the Conference
of Pleasure, to the imagination. Prosperous cere-

* See XXVI Prometheus, sive status hominis. [£D.]

154

"THE TEMPEST" AND ITS SYMBOLISM

monious rejection of his magic robes is an
adumbration of Bacon's anxiety to preserve his
Philosophy from being calumniated as a poetical
dream, a thing infected with the style of the poets,
as he once (in a fragmentary Essay of Fame)
confessed himself to be. Devotion to Miranda
again is the motive for Prospero's resolve to dismiss
Ariel from his service, at a time when Ariel could
ill be spared, one feels, by his ageing master. The
words my dainty Ariel I shall miss thee are eloquent
of pain, pain self-inflicted and unexplained, except
by a promise wholly uncalled-for by anything that
appears on the surface. Ariel on the other hand,
tricksy Ariel, incapable of human affection, sick
of expecting a long-promised freedom, feels no
pain, no regret, nothing but joy at the prospect of
slaving it no longer for a despotic master : Merrily,
merrily shall I live now, Under the blossom that hangs
on the bough.

The last words of one of Prospero's closing
speeches, Every third thought shall be my grave,
followed up as they are by the thinly veiled pathos
of his appeal in the Epilogue, perplex and distress
the reader. Prosper o triumph ans, without one
word of warning or explanation, has changed into
Miser o supplicans. Why this sudden revulsion ?.
To my untutored mind it intimates a working-over
of the play after Bacon's fall, for the purpose of
adapting it, not too obviously, to the altered cir
cumstances of the original author, that unfortunate
Chancellor who, according to Ben Jonson, hath
filled up all numbers, and performed that in our tongue
which may be compared or preferred, either to insolent

155

BACONIAN ESSAYS

Greece or haughty Rome. The date of this (last)
working-over would probably synchronise with the
first public or semi-public appearances of the First
Folio (of Shakespeare), of Bacon's De Augmentis
Scientiarum, and of Ben Jonson's Time Vindicated,
these four events — with perhaps a Court perfor
mance of the adapted Tempest thrown in — being,
I venture to think, intimately connected with what
may be called an Apotheosis of Bacon.

" A remarkable story indeed " — an objector may
say — " but do you seriously believe that Bacon can
be proved to have been the Author, and Shakespeare
the pen-name ? Besides, does it really matter —
except to Stratford and Verulam — whether Shake
speare hailed from this place or that ? We have
the poems and we have the plays, and that is enough.
As for your reading of The Tempest, it may be
ingenious, but it is not convincing. Patience, with
a modicum of ingenuity, has probably never
despaired of cajoling almost any given meaning
out of any fable — fables, like dreams and Delphian
utterances, being almost as plastic as wax. More
over, the inner meaning you claim to have disclosed,
involves the absurdity of supposing that a fable was
invented for the express purpose of wrapping up
the said meaning, so effectually as to ensure its being
missed by all the world, a few esoteric con
temporaries only excepted. The idea, to be quite
candid, belongs rather to Bedlam than to Bacon."

Strict proof, I reply, is hardly to be expected
either now or hereafter. A high degree of pro
bability, resting on evidence of various kinds and
different degrees of cogency, is all that the writer

156

" THE TEMPEST " AND ITS SYMBOLISM

has ever contended for. The history of literature
abounds in instances of pseudonymity. Of these
one of the most apposite that occurs to me is that
of Aristophanes, who made use of the name
Callistratus, a contemporary actor, to mask his
(own) authorship of the Birds, Lysistrata, etc.
There are differences, of course, between the two
cases, one being that in that of Aristophanes there
were no very obvious reasons for concealment,
whereas in the case of Bacon there were several.
Whether it really matters who the great poet was
depends on the word " really." It certainly does
not matter in the sense in which the high price of
coal, the low price of Consols, England's relations
with other Powers, etc., matter. It does matter
for The Tempest, the symbolism of which probably
extends beyond Miranda and Prospero, as far as
Neapolis, and possibly further. It cannot fail to
affect the interpretation of other plays of Shake
speare. It solves, or helps to solve, interesting
problems in the life and acknowledged works of
Bacon. It matters in short for all genuine admirers
of English literature. As to plasticity — where the
fable to be juggled is vague, undocumented,
variously and incoherently documented, or frugal
of features, the operation will be child's play.
With such a fable as The Tempest the trick can only
be brought off by singling out one or two features
and shutting the eye to all the rest. One objection
only remains to be dealt with. The reference to
Bedlam with which it concludes might have been
omitted, but no discussion of this question seems
quite in order without some innuendo that the

157

BACONIAN ESSAYS

unorthodox person is mad or a crank. The objection
itself (though the phrasing might be challenged as
favouring the objector) is pertinent enough, and
may be answered as follows : Bacon was an
inveterate treasure-seeker. The unsunned treasures
he sought were not material things like gold and
silver, but gems of thought hidden away in the
dreamlands of poetry. The genesis of this habit
was no doubt closely related to his theory that poesy
enables the artist in words to retire and obscure
. . . secrets and mysteries by involving them in fables
invented for the purpose, a practice by no means
uncommon, he firmly believed, among the poets of
antiquity when they wished to reserve information
for selected auditors.

So far the discussion has been grave to the point
of dullness. Would that I had been able to enliven
it, if only because The Tempest is a comedy — heads
the file of the comedies in the First Folio. Possibly
the following quotation from the work of an eminent
critic may help to remedy the fault : Miranda . . .
and her fellow Perdita are idealizations of the sweet
country maidens whom Shakspere (sic) would see
about him in his renewed family life at Stratford*

* It is a pity that Mr. Smithson has not given us the reference to
this delightfully comic, but highly characteristic utterance. [Eo.]

158

THE COMMON KNOWLEDGE OF
SHAKESPEARE AND BACON

MANY years ago, when, not having bestowed a
thought upon the subject, I was, naturally, of the
orthodox Stratfordian faith, and knew nothing of
the Baconian " heresy " except the time-honoured
joke that " Shakespeare >: was not written by
Shakespeare, but by another gentleman of the
same name (which I thought " devilish funny ")
I happened to be reading Bacon's Essay on
Gardens. This passage at once arrested my
attention : u In April follow, the double violet ;
the wall-flower ; the stock-gilliflower ; the cowslip ;
flower-de-luces, and lillies of all natures" Why,
thought I, those last words are almost identical
with some used by Perdita at the conclusion of her
lovely catalogue of flowers ! I turned to the
Winter's Tale (IV. 4) and there read :

lillies of all kinds,
The flower-de-luce being one.

For at least half a minute I thought, in my
innocence, that I had made a discovery ! But
reflection of course, told me that so startling a
parallelism must have been observed by hundreds
before me. * Lillies of all kinds," says Shakespeare ;

L 161

BACONIAN ESSAYS

" lillies of all natures," says Bacon ; and each
specifies " the flower-de-luce " as one of them !
Surely, I said to myself, this is no mere coincidence !
Surely one of these writers must have, consciously
or unconsciously, taken the words from the other !
On closer inspection, too, I found a remarkable
resemblance between the two lists of flowers,
Bacon's and Shakespeare's ; that they are in fact
substantially the same. Did then Shakspere borrow
from Bacon ? Very possibly, I thought ; but on
investigation I found that the Essay on Gardens was
first printed in 1625, nme years after player Shak
spere 's death. Well, then, did Bacon borrow from
Shakspere in this instance ? Few, I think, would be
inclined to adopt that hypothesis. The author of
the Essay had made a life-long study of gardens,
and, as Mr. James Spedding writes (though I did
not discover this till years afterwards), "it is not
probable that Bacon would have anything to learn
of William Shakespeare [i.e., Shakspere of Stratford]
concerning the science of gardening." " Moreover,"
says the same writer, " the scene in Winter's Tale
where Perdita presents the guests with flowers . . .
has some expressions which, if the Essay had been
printed somewhat earlier, would have made me
suspect that Shakespeare had been reading it ! "*
Yes, indeed, and these " expressions," almost
identical in both, have made some persons
" suspect " that the same pen wrote both the
Essay and the Scene.

There are, as all those who have studied the two
authors are aware, many other striking coincidences

* Bacon's Works, edited by Spedding, vi, 486.

162

SHAKESPEARE AND BACON

to be found in the writings of Shakespeare and
Bacon. In this chapter I propose to consider some
of them only, namely those which, nearly twenty
years ago, formed the subject of a controversy
between the late Judge Webb, and the late Professor
Dowden.

In the year 1902 the late Judge Webb, then
Regius Professor of Laws, and Public Orator in
the University of Dublin, published a book which
he called The Mystery of William Shakespeare.

The eighth chapter of that work treats " Of
Shakespeare as a Man of Science," and here the
learned Judge put forward a number of parallelisms
taken from Shakespeare's plays and Bacon's works
(mainly from the Natural History, which was
published eleven years after the death of Shakspere
of Stratford), in order to show that " the scientific
opinions of Shakespeare so completely coincide
with those of Bacon that we must regard the two
philosophers as one in their philosophy, however
reluctant we may be to recognize them as actually

one."

To this the late Professor Dowden replied, in
The National Review of July, 1902, and brought
forward an immense amount of learning to show
that these coincidences really prove nothing, because
" all which Dr. Webb regards as proper to Shake
speare and Bacon was, in fact, the common knowledge
or common error of the time." Whereunto the Judge,
in a brief rejoinder (National Review, August, 1902),
intimated that all he was concerned with was " the
common knowledge and common error of Shake
speare and Bacon, " his case being that in matters

163

BACONIAN ESSAYS

of science these two, as a fact, show an extremely
close agreement. The question for the reader,
therefore, is whether or not that agreement is so
remarkable that something more than " the common
knowledge or common error of the time " is required
to explain it.

Here the matter has been left, but I think it may
be of interest to consider once more the points at
issue between these two learned disputants. Let
me premise that I do not write as a " Baconian."
The hypothesis that Bacon was the author of the
plays of Shakespeare, or some of them, or some
parts of them, may be mere " madhouse chatter,"
as Sir Sidney Lee has styled it, or we may be content
with more moderate language, and merely say that
the hypothesis is " not proven." I leave that
vexata qufestio on one side. But, whatever may be
our opinion with regard to it, it must, I think, be
admitted that some of the " parallelisms," or
" coincidences," between Bacon and Shakespeare
are really very remarkable, and the controversy
between Judge Webb and Professor Dowden,
which I here pass under review, has not, as it seems
to me, so conclusively explained their existence as
to leave nothing further for the consideration of an
impartial critic.

Let me take an example. Bacon in his Sylva
Sylvarum, or Natural History* (Cent. I, p. 98),
speaks of " the spirits or pneumaticals that are in
all tangible bodies," and which, he says, " are
scarce known." They are not, he tells us, as some
suppose, virtues and qualities of the tangible parts

* First published in 1627, • 7ear after Bacon's death.

164

SHAKESPEARE AND BACON

which " men see/' but " they are things by them
selves, " i.e., entities. And again (Cent. VII, 601),
he says, " all bodies have spirits, and pneumatical
parts within them," and he goes on to point out the
differences between the " spirits " in animate, and
those in inanimate things. Further on (Cent. VII,
693), Bacon writes : " It hath been observed by the
ancients that much use of Venus doth dim the
sight," and the cause of this, he says, " is the expense
of spirits." Now in Sonnet 129 Shakespeare
writes :

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action.

Here we certainly seem to have a remarkable
agreement between Shakespeare and Bacon. Both
use the very same expression " the expense of
spirit " and (which constitutes the real strength
of the parallel) both use it in exactly the same
application. What is Professor Dowden's ex
planation ? He says that " the mediaeval theory
of * spirits ' will be found in the Encyclopedia of
Bartholomew Anglicus on the Properties of Things,"
which he says was " a book of wide influence."
He says further : " The popular opinions of
Shakespeare's time respecting * spirits ' may be
read in Bright *s Treatise of Melancholy, 1586, and
Burton's Anatomy, 1621, and in many another
volume. . . . Bright, in his Melancholy, seems
almost to anticipate the theory of Bacon, and
possibly he was himself influenced by Paracelsus."
As to the expression " expense of spirit," he says
it may be found in this book of Bright 's (pp. 62, 237,

165

BACONIAN ESSAYS

and 244), and in Donne's Progress of the Soul. I
do not understand the Professor to suggest that the
Stratford player had consulted these works (Burton,
of course, is out of the question) for he writes : " The
language of Shakespeare is popular, and connected
probably neither with what Bright nor what Bacon
wrote, but if a theory be required, it can be found as
easily in a volume which Shakespeare might have
read, as in a volume published after his death. "
Bacon, however, we may say with confidence, knew
these books, and had, in all probability, read them.
The Professor, for instance, refers to Paracelsus,
and subsequently, on another point, to Scaliger.
Bacon, as we know, was familiar with both these
writers, and makes reference to them (see, for
instance, Natural History, Cent. IV, 354, and Cent.
VII, 694), whereas it will, I suppose, hardly be
suggested that the player had sought inspiration in
the works of these scholars.

The first question, then, which suggests itself is
this. Are we to conclude, because there is a theory
of " spirits " (which Bacon says " are scarce known ")
to be found in Bartholomew Anglicus, and Bright,
and Paracelsus, that it was a matter of " popular >:
knowledge, a subject with which Shakspere of
Stratford, as well as the philosopher ot Gorhambury,
would have been likely to be familiar ? This
question seems to me a very doubtful one, but if
it is to be answered in the affirmative, then we have
to ask : Is this assumed popular knowledge, or
popular error, sufficient to account for the use by
both Shakespeare and Bacon of exactly the same
expression in exactly the same collocation ? And

166

SHAKESPEARE AND BACON

in considering this question we must remember
that the evidence is cumulative, i.e., this coincidence
is not a solitary instance, but only one of many,
and it is but fair, if we wish to come to a just decision,
that all of them should be considered together.

But how far is it true, as Professor Dowden alleges

it to be, that " Bright in his Melancholy seems almost

to anticipate the theory of Bacon ? " The book is

a scarce one. There is no copy in the London

Library. However I have taken the trouble to

examine it at the British Museum. Professor

Dowden refers to pages 62, 237, and 244. In

the edition which I examined, that of 1586, there

is no reference to the " expense of spirits " at

p. 237. Neither is there at p. 62. On page 63,

however, I find the following. The author, one

Timothy Bright, " Doctor of Phisicke," is speaking

of strong affections of the mind, and he says : " If

it holde on long and release not, the nourishment

will also faile, the increase of the body diminish,

and the flower of beautie fade, and finally death

take his fatall hold ; which commeth to passe, not

onely by expence of spirit, but by leaving destitute

the parts, whereby declining to decay, they become

at length unmeete for the entertainment of so noble

an inhabitant as the soule," etc. On p. 244 we

read: " Now as all contention of the mind is to be

intermitted, so especially that whereto the melan-

cholicke person most hath given himself before the

passion is chiefly to be eschued, for the recoverie

of former estate and restoring the depraved conceit

and fearefull affection. For there, if the affection

of liking go withal, both hart and braine do over

167

BACONIAN ESSAYS

prodigally spend their spirite and with them the
subtilest parts of the naturall iuyce [juice] and
humours of the bodie. If of mislike and the thing
be by forcible constraint layd on, the distracting of
the mind, from the promptness of affection,
breedeth such an agonie in our nature that thereon
riseth also great expence of spirit, and of the most
rare and subtile humours of our bodies, which are
as it were the seate of our naturall heate," etc.

Now in both these passages we find, indeed, the
expression the " expense of spirit," but, except for
that, it appears that they can hardly be cited as
parallel passages with those of either Bacon or
Shakespeare. It is not alleged that this expression
is peculiar to these two writers — assuming the
duality. The parallelism consists in this, that
they both use the words in connection with what
Bacon terms " the use of Venus." I cannot see
that the passages in B right's treatise, when they are
carefully examined, make this parallelism at all
less remarkable.

The Professor further tells us that the expression
" expense of spirits " may be found in Donne's
Progress of the Soul* Stanza VI. I do not find it
in that stanza, but in Stanza V the following
occurs. The poet prays that he may be free,

From the lets

Of steep ambition, sleepy poverty,
Spirit-quenching sickness, dull captivity,
Distracting business, and from beauty's nets,
And all that calls from this, and t' others whets,
O let me not launch out, but let me save
Th' expence of brain, and spirit, that my grave
His right and due, a whole unwasted man, may have.

* This work seems to have been first published in 1612.

168

SHAKESPEARE AND BACON

And in Stanza XXI are the words quoted by
Professor Dowden, concerning the sparrow :

Freely on his she friends
He blood, and spirit, pith and marrow spends.

This indeed proves, what nobody has ever denied,
viz., that the expression " to spend the spirit "
is not confined among writers of the Elizabethan
age to Bacon and Shakespeare. To what extent
it detracts from the force of the coincidence on
which Judge Webb has laid stress, I must leave it
to the reader to determine. The learned Judge
laughs at the idea that citations from B right 's
Treatise of Melancholy and Donne's Progress of the
Soul, are proof that the expression was one in
common use.

There is another example of agreement between
Bacon and Shakespeare in connection with this
theory of " spirits." Jessica says (Merchant of
Venice, V. i) :

I am never merry when I heare swet music.
To which Lorenzo replies :

The reason is your spirits are attentive.

Bacon writes (Natural Hist. Cent. VIII, 745) :
" Some noises help sleep ; as the blowing of the
wind, the trickling of water, humming of bees,
soft singing, reading, etc. The cause is for that
they move in the spirits a gentle attention"

Upon this Professor Dowden tells us that Bright
talks of music " alluring the spirites," while
" Burton quotes from Lemnius, who declares that
music not only affects the ears, ' but the very
arteries, the vital and animal spirits,1 and, again

169

BACONIAN ESSAYS

from Scaliger, who explains its power as due to the
fact that it plays upon ' the spirits about the heart/
whereupon Burton, like Shakespeare's Lorenzo,
proceeds to speak of the influence of music upon
beasts, and like Lorenzo, cites the tale of Orpheus."
But Burton's Anatomy was not published till 1621,
about five years after Shakspere's death, and we
can hardly suppose that the player delved into
;< Lemnius " or " Scaliger ! " But we shall doubt
less be told that, whether Shakspere had read
these books or not, the fact that Bright speaks of
music alluring the spirits shows that this was a
common expression, and that Lorenzo's words are
to be referred to " the common knowledge or the
common error of the time." But Lorenzo says,
;< your spirits are attentive'' and Bacon speaks of
" a gentle attention " of the spirits. I do not see
this expression in Bright, or Lemnius, or Scaliger,
as quoted by Professor Dowden. Here, then, we
have two expressions, " the expense of spirits ''
in connection with Venus, and " the attention of
spirits " in connection with music, both in Shake
speare and Bacon. It will be for every reader who
is interested in the question, taking these coin
cidences with many others of a similar character,
to decide whether " the common knowledge of the
time " affords a sufficient explanation. And let
him remember two things — first, that it is, of
course, impossible to find an agreement between
Shakespeare and Bacon on a subject of which they
two alone (if two they were) had exclusive know
ledge, and secondly that though one, or two, or
three threads may not suffice to bear a weight, a

170

SHAKESPEARE AND BACON

great many threads combined into a cord may do
so. At any rate, it may be said of these two :

Utrumque vestrum incredibili modo
Consentit astrum.

Judge Webb, of course, refers to the well-known
fact that both Shakespeare and Bacon held similar
views on the relationship of Art to nature, both
holding that art was not something different from
nature, but a part of nature. All will remember
the dialogue between Perdita and Polixenes in the
Winter's Tale :

Per. : . . . The fairest flowers o' the season
Are our carnations and streak'd gillyvors,
Which some call nature's bastards ; of that kind
Our rustic garden's barren : and I care not
To get slips of them.

Pol. : . . . Wherefore, gentle maiden,
Do you neglect them ?

Per. : . . . For I have heard it said

There is an art which in their piedness shares
With great creating nature.

Pol. : . Say there be ;

Yet nature is made better by no mean,

But nature makes that mean : so, over that art

Which you say adds to nature, is an art

That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry

A gentler scion to the wildest stock

And make conceive a bark of baser kind

By bud of nobler race : this is an art

Which does mend nature, change it rather, but

The art itself is nature.

It certainly seems remarkable that the King of
Bohemia should lecture the country girl on the
essential identity of nature and art. It is not

171

BACONIAN ESSAYS

exactly what we should have expected. It is
somewhat strange, too, to find Bacon waxing
eloquent on the same subject, and to the same
effect. Take the following from the De Augmentis
(Lib. II, Cap. ii.) : " Libenter autem historiam
artium, ut historiae naturalis speciem, constituimus :
quia inveteravit prorsus opinio, ac si aliud quippiam
esset ars a natura, artificialia a naturalibus. . . .
Sed et illabitur etiam animis hominum aliud sub-
tilius malum ; nempe, ut ars censeatur solummodo
tanquam additamentum quoddam, naturce^ cujus
scilicet ea sit vis, ut naturam, sane, vel inchoatam
perficere, vel in deterius vergentem emendare, vel
impeditam liberare ; minime vero penitus vertere,
transmutare, aut in imis concutere possit : quod
ipsum rebus humanis praeproperam desperationem
intulit."

That is to say, " we very willingly treat the
history of art as a form of natural history ; for an
opinion has long been prevalent that art is something
different from nature — things artificial from things
natural. . . . There is likewise another and more
subtle error which has crept into the human mind,
namely, that of considering art as merely an
assistant* to nature, having the power indeed to
finish what nature has begun, to correct her when
lapsing into error, or to set her free when in bondage,
but by no means to change, transmute, or funda
mentally alter nature. And this has bred a
premature despair in human enterprises." He
goes on to point out that, on the contrary, there is
no essential difference between art and nature,

* Additamentum, an addition, or accession to.

172

SHAKESPEARE AND BACON

things artificial being simply things natural as
affected by human agency, which is a part of nature,
so that in the words of Shakespeare, " the art itself
is nature."*

Here it may be worth while to point out that
these words are not to be found in the English
Advancement of Learning, first printed in 1605,
but are found in the enlarged Latin version made
under Bacon's supervision, and published in 1623,
the very year in which the Winter's Tale also first
saw the light in print, to wit in the First Folio.
The play may, no doubt, have been written some
ten years before that, but whether in its earlier
form it contained all this not very appropriate
philosophy concerning art and nature, it is of course
impossible to say. It is said to have been written
about 1611, and we find Bacon writing about the
same time very much to the same effect as above
quoted, t

Artificial selection is, therefore, after all only a
form and part of natural selection, the differentia
being that it is human agency which brings it into
play. And that Bacon had, by one of his luminous
intuitions, which are really quite as remarkable as

* At contra, illud animis hominum penitus insidere debuerats
artificialia a naturalibus, non forma aut essentia, sed efficiente solummodo
differre ; homini quippe in naturam nullius rei potestatem esse, praeter-
quam motus, ut scilicet corpora naturalia aut admoveat, aut amoveat. . .
Itaque natura omnia regit : subordinantur autem ilia tria ; cursu,
naturae ; exspatiatio naturse ; et ars, sive additus rebus homo.

t " It is the fashion to talk as if art were something different from
nature, or a sort of addition to nature, with power to finish what nature
has begun, or correct her when going aside. In truth, man has no
power over nature except that of motion — the power, I say, of putting
natural bodies together, or separating them — the rest is done by nature
within." Descriptio Globi Intellectualis, circ. 1612. Man (e.g ) as the
modern writer puts it, " can bring together the radium and the
bouillon, but the radiobe, whatever it may be, is none the less a
product of nature." " The art itself is nature."

173

BACONIAN ESSAYS

his inductive philosophy, a foreshadowing of the
theory of evolution is undeniable, for we have it
plainly stated in his Natural History (Cent. VI,
525) : ' This work of the transmutation of plants
one into another is inter magnolia naturce ; for the
transmutation of species is, in vulgar philosophy,
pronounced impossible, and certainly it is a thing
of difficulty, and requireth deep search into nature ;
but seeing there appear some manifest instances of
it, the opinion of impossibility is to be rejected, and
the means thereof to be found out."*

As to the " streaked gillivors, which some call
nature's bastards/' we find that Bacon has much
to say concerning experiments in the colouration and
variation of these gillyflowers. In the Natural
History (Cent. VI, 506), he writes: " Amongst
curiosities I shall place coloration, though it be
somewhat better : for beauty in flowers is their
pre-eminence. It is observed by some that gilly
flowers . . . that are coloured, if they be
neglected, and neither watered, nor new molded,
nor transplanted, will turn white." Subsequently
(510) we read : " Take gillyflower seed, of one kind
of gillyflower, as of the clove gillyflower, which is
the most common, and sow it, and there will come
up gillyflowers some of one colour and some of
another," etc. Then, in 513, we come to the
application of " art " to these flowers : " It is a
curiosity also to make flowers double, which is

* Unfortunately, however, Bacon's instances are far from satisfactory.
" We see," he says, " that in living creatures, that come of putrefaction,
there is much transmutation of one into another ; as caterpillars turn
into flies, etc. And it should seem probable, that whatsoever creature,
having life, is generated without seed, that creature will change out of
one species into another." And so forth.

174

SHAKESPEARE AND BACON

effected by often removing them into new earth. . . .
Inquire also whether inoculating of flowers, as stock-
gillyflowers . . . doth not make them double."

At any rate it must, I think, be admitted that we
have here some very remarkable resemblances
between Bacon and Shakespeare. First we have,
as mentioned in the opening of this chapter, an
almost complete verbal agreement, " lillies of all
kinds, the flower-de-luce being one/' and " flower-
de-luces and lillies of all natures " ; then we have
two very similar lists of flowers according to the
seasons, whether of the year, or of human life ;
then we have a complete and, I think extraordinary
agreement, as to the philosophy of " nature " and
" art " —to wit, that the two are essentially one,
since art is but part of nature. Moreover it seems
that both writers, if two there were, were writing
these things just about the same time. And
finally we find that both writers are much concerned
with the colours and varieties of " streaked gilly-
vors " or " stock-gillyvors."*

What does Professor Dowden say to this ? He
quotes William Harrison's Description of England :
" How art also helpeth nature in the dailie colour
ing, dubling, and enlarging the proportion of our
fl oures, it is incredible, to report," etc. But Harrison
does not say, as Shakespeare and Bacon say, that the
art is part of nature ("The art itself is nature").
He merely speaks of art as an additamentum quoddam

* Judge Webb does not refer to Bacon's remarks on the coloration
of flowers which I have thought worth citing, but he quotes the Natural
History to the effect that " if you can get a scion to grow upon a stock
of another kind " it " may make the fruit greater, though it is like it
will make the fruit baser." But this is not much of a " parallel " with
the remark of Polixenes as to marrying " a gentler scion to the wildest
stock," etc.

175

BACONIAN ESSAYS

naturce, which is just the proposition that Bacon (and
Shakespeare, by implication) condemns as fallacious.
Professor Dowden then tells us that this thought
as to art and nature was prominent in the teaching
of Paracelsus whom Bacon refuses to honour. But
whether or not Bacon refuses to honour Paracelsus
he was, at any rate, familiar with him, and makes
frequent mention of him. So again as to Pliny,
whom the Professor appeals to in this matter.
Bacon cites him in the very passage of the De
Augmentis (Lib. II, Cap. ii), part of which I have
quoted. It seems rather remarkable that the
authors to whom the Professor makes his appeal
should be, so frequently, writers such as Pliny,
and Paracelsus, and Scaliger who certainly were
well known to Bacon. I doubt if the Stratford
player had included these in his (assumed) omni
vorous reading ; nor do I think " the common
knowledge and common error of the time " explain
these coincidences of thought and expression in
an altogether satisfactory way. The lines,

. . . this is an art

Which does mend nature, change it rather, but

The art itself is nature,

really do seem to bear the Baconian stamp on the
face of them. However those who think it sufficient
to find that something similar (though certainly
not the same) was said by somebody else somewhere
about the same time will doubtless be satisfied with
Professor Dowden 's hypothesis of a common origin
in common knowledge, or error ; and those who
are " convinced against their will," will, as usual,
be " of the same opinion still." They should note,

176

SHAKESPEARE AND BACON

however, that Mr. Spedding candidly admits that
if the Essay on Gardens had been published before
1616, he would have suspected that it had been
read by Shakespeare !

It is interesting to note that Shakespeare speaks
of plants as distinguished by sex difference. An
old friend of mine, now, alas, gone to that bourne
whence no traveller returns, who, like many others,
used to maintain that " everything can be found
in Shakespeare " (a proposition which if confined
within reasonable limits I should be the last to
dispute) was so struck by this fact that, in an article
contributed by him to the Saturday Review, he
expressed the opinion that " it can only be explained
as a flash of genius hitting on an obscure truth by a
great observer, as Shakespeare undoubtedly was."
And in a note to this article, when published with
others in book form, he says : "I claim the discovery
in the case of flowers for Shakespeare."* But the
conception of sex-difference in plants originated
long before the days of Shakespeare. It is, if I
remember rightly, to be found in Herodotus. But
however that may be, it was certainly well known
to Bacon who writes (Nat. Hist. Cent. VII, 608) :
' For the difference of sexes in plants they are
oftentimes by name distinguished, as male-piony,
female-piony, male-rosemary, female-rosemary ; he-
holly, she-holly," etc. He goes on to notice the
case of the he-palm and the she-palm, which were
said to fall violently in love with one another, as to
which further details may be found in Burton's
Anatomy of Melancholy. Bacon adds : " I am apt

* Country Matters in Short, by W. F. Collier, p. 21.
M 177

BACONIAN ESSAYS

enough to think that this same binarium of a stronger
and a weaker, like unto masculine and feminine,
doth hold in all living bodies."*

To return for a moment to Professor Dowden.
I should be the last to deny that he states the case
against Judge Webb, so far as regards these Shake
speare-Bacon parallelisms, with great force and
learning, and what in an "orthodox" critic is,
perhaps, best of all, with admirable temper. And
in some cases, I am free to admit that he seems to
me to have the best of the argument.

But let us take another example. Hamlet, in
his letter to Ophelia, writes :

Doubt thou the stars are fire,
Doubt that the sun doth move ;

Doubt truth to be a liar ;
But never doubt I love.

Upon this Judge Webb comments that Bacon,
notwithstanding the teaching of Bruno, and of
Galileo, maintained that " the celestial bodies,
most of them, are fires or flames as the Stoics held,"
and that, notwithstanding the teaching of Coper
nicus, he held the mediaeval doctrine of " the
heavens turning about in a most rapid motion."
And he adds, with a touch of sarcasm : " The marvel
is that the omniscient Shakespeare with his super
human genius maintained these exploded errors
as confidently as Bacon." Whereunto Professor
Dowden replies that " it presses rather hardly

* See also his remarks on the saying " homo est planta inversa,"
Cent. VII, 607, and compare Burton, Anat : of Melancholy, vol. 2,
p. 193. Ed. 1800. The scientific facts with regard to sex-difference in the
vegetable world were not discovered till some seventy years after
Shakspere's death.

178

SHAKESPEARE AND BACON

upon Hamlet's distracted letter to deduce from
his rhyme ' a theory of the celestial bodies/ " and
he goes on to say that, " in fact Shakespeare repeats
the reference to the stars as fires many times/' and
that " references to the stars as fire and to the
motion of the heavens are scattered over the pages
of Shakespeare's contemporaries as thickly as the
stars themselves."

Now all this about the stars might, as it seems to
me, have been omitted altogether. To assert that
the fixed stars are " fire " is surely not to be taken
as a proof of scientific ignorance ! The sun itself
is but a star, and all of us have read of the " mighty
flames/' as Sir Robert Ball calls them, that leap
from the surface of the sun.* But to affirm " that
the sun doth move " as one of the certainties of
human knowledge was in Shakespeare's time
tantamount to a rejection of the heliocentric teaching
of Copernicus and Bruno in favour of the old
Ptolemaic system, or, at any rate, of a system in
which the earth is supposed to be at rest.f Now,
that Bacon had failed to profit by the teaching of
Copernicus is certain, for in his Descriptio Globi
Intellectually and Thema Cceli (1612) he condemns
all the then existing systems of Astronomy as

* At the same time we must take note, that Bacon's theory of the
flamy substance of which the stars are supposed to consist, seems to
differ not a little from the modern conception of matter in a state of
combustion or incandescence. See Abbott's Life of Bacon, pp. 374-5.

f Sir Edward Sullivan, who appears to have been captivated by
Signor Paolo Orano's quite untenable theory that Hamlet is meant for
Giordano-Bruno, makes a truly remarkable comment upon the second
of the lines above-quoted, viz. : " Doubt that the sun doth move."
He says this line " is the Copernican System in little " ! It is, of course,
the very opposite. It is the Ptolemaic System in little ! (See Sir E.
Sullivan in The Nineteenth Century, February, 1918).

179

BACONIAN ESSAYS

unsatisfactory. His biographer, Dr. Abbott, who
is very far from being an indulgent critic, finds
much excuse for him here in the fact that Copernicus
" himself advocated his own system merely as an
hypothesis/' and that it was inconsistent and
incomplete until Newton had discovered the Law
of Gravitation. He adds : "It is creditable to
Bacon's faith in the uniformity of nature, that he
predicted that future discoveries would rest * upon
observation of the common passions and desires
of matter ' — an anticipation of Newton's law of
attraction."*

But granting that Bacon and Shakespeare
were at one in their rejection of the teaching of
Copernicus, Bruno, and Galileo, it seems to me
that no argument on behalf of the Baconian theory
can be safely founded upon that fact. For the
" Stratfordian " answer is very simple, viz., that
William Shakspere, the Stratford player and
supposed author, very naturally was not abreast
of the most advanced scientific teaching of his day.
He, of course, conceived that the sun moved round
the earth as Ptolemy taught, and not vice versa.
The argument therefore can only be effective (if
at all) as against those Shakespeariolaters who
conceive that player Shakspere was omniscient,
or, at least, wrote, as it were, by plenary
inspiration.

Mr. Edwin Reed, however, makes another use
of these lines. He points out that in the Quarto

* Life, pp. 373-4. Mill remarks (Logic, vol. i, p. 253) that Newton's
discovery " is the greatest example which has yet occurred of the trans
formation, at one stroke, of a science which was still to a great degree
merely experimental into a deductive science."

180

SHAKESPEARE AND BACON

of 1603 they do not run as above quoted, but as
follows :

Doubt that in earth is fire,

Doubt that the stars do move,

Doubt truth to be a liar,
But do not doubt I love,

and he refers to Bacon's Cogitationes de Natura
Rerum, assigned to the latter part of 1603, or the
early part of 1604, and quotes a passage from his
De Principiis atque Originibus, in order to show that
at that date Bacon had changed his mind in regard
to the commonly accepted belief in the existence
of a mass of molten matter at the centre of the
earth, and maintained that, on the contrary, the
terrestrial globe is cold to the core. He goes on to
suggest that the substitution of " the sun " for
" the stars/' giving us the line.

Doubt that the sun doth move,

in the 1604 edition, is indicative of a deliberate
intention on the part of the writer to retain " the
doctrine that the earth is the centre of the universe
around which the sun and stars daily revolve."
So that, in spite of Copernicus, and Bruno, and
Kepler and Galileo, Bacon and the author of the
Plays " were agreed in holding to the cycles and
epicycles of Ptolemy, after all the rest of the
scientific world had rejected them, and they were
also agreed in rejecting the Copernican theory after
all the rest of the scientific world had accepted it."
And the same doctrine is, of course, retained in the
Folio edition of Hamlet, published in 1623, m which
same year Bacon wrote, in the third book of the

181

BACONIAN ESSAYS

De Augmentis, that the theory of the earth's motion
is absolutely false !

All this is ingenious, but how far it is convincing
must be left for the reader's consideration.

Let us take yet another example. Bacon in his
Natural History (s. 464) tells us that " as terebration
doth meliorate fruit, so upon the like reason doth
letting of plants blood, " the difference being that
the blood-letting is only to be effected " at some
seasons " of the year. And so also the gardener
in Richard II says :

We at time of year

Do wound the bark, the skin of our fruit trees,
Lest, being over-proud with sap and blood,
With too much riches it confound itself.

Here, as Professor Dowden admits, " the parallel
is remarkably close," but in order to show the
" common knowledge of the time," which is to
account for it, he cites Holland's Pliny to the effect
that trees " have a certain moisture in their barkes
which we must understand to be their very blood,"
and he further refers to Pliny (XVII. 24), to the effect
that a fir or pine tree must not have its bark
!< pulled " during certain months, and adds that,
" like Shakespeare, Pliny terms the bark the ' skin '
of the tree." Once more, it is remarkable that the
reference should be to Pliny, an author with whom,
as we know, Bacon was on very familiar terms.*'
However, there is a further illustration from Dekker,
and a quotation as to " proudly-stirring " sap from
Gervase Markham.

* He appears on almost every page of Professor Dowden's article.

182

SHAKESPEARE AND BACON

Here again, the only question, as it seems to me,
is whether this " remarkably close parallelism,'*
considered as one among many, is satisfactorily
explained by the fact that other contemporary
writers spoke of wounding the bark of trees, and
drawing blood. It would, certainly, be more
satisfactory, from a Baconian point of view, if we
could find in both Bacon and Shakespeare some
thing which could only have been known to those
two writers, or to that one writer. But as that is
hardly possible we have to consider all the parallel
passages together, and ask ourselves whether or
not, taken as a whole, they raise the presumption
of identity of authorship.

Judge Webb, while denying the allegation that
" all that is proper to Shakespeare and to Bacon was
the common knowledge or common error of the
time/' writes as follows : * Whatever inferences
may be deduced from the fact, it surely is a fact
that the poet, like the philosopher, maintained the
theory of pneumaticals, the theory of the trans
formation of species, the theory that the sun is the
efficient cause of stoims, the theory that flame is a
fixed body, the theory that the stars are fires, and the
theory that the heavens revolve around the earth.
That the poet should have been as interested as the
philosopher in scientific matters is surely a fact worth
noting ; and even if they resorted to the store of
* the common knowledge or common error of the
time,' it surely is remarkable that they not only
resorted to the same storehouse, but selected the
same things, and incorporated the same things in
their respective writings, and, so far as either their

183

BACONIAN ESSAYS

knowledge or their errors in matters of science were
concerned, were in reality the same."

And here, since I profess not to be compiling a
new " brief for the plaintiff " in the great case of
Bacon v. Shakespeare, I am content to leave this
interesting controversy for further consideration.

G. G.

184

THE NORTHUMBERLAND
MANUSCRIPT

IN the year 1867 there was discovered at old
Northumberland House in the Strand, in a box
which had been for many years unopened, an
Elizabethan manuscript volume containing, amongst
other things, the transcripts of certain compositions
admittedly the work of Francis Bacon. It com
mences with four speeches written by Bacon in
1592 for Essex's Device, viz. : ' The praise of
the worthiest virtue " ; " The praise of the worthiest
affection"; 'The praise of the worthiest power ";
" The praise of the worthiest person." These
speeches were published in 1870 by Mr. James
Spedding, with an introductory notice of the
manuscript, and a facsimile of its much bescribbled
outside page, or cover, of which more anon. The
speech in praise of knowledge professes to have
been spoken in " A conference of Pleasure," and
Mr. Spedding adopted this as the title of his little
work. The manuscript book is thus described
by him : " It is a folio volume of twenty-two sheets
which have been laid one upon the other, folded
double (as in an ordinary quire of paper) and
fastened by a stitch through the centre. But

187

BACONIAN ESSAYS

as the pages are not numbered and the fastening is
gone, it may once have contained more, and if we may
judge by what is still legible on the much bescribbled
outside leaf which once served for a table of contents,
there is some reason to suspect that it did." In a
note he adds : " One leaf, however — that which
would have been the tenth — is missing ; and one,
which is the fourth, appears to have been glued or
pasted in." It is clear that he included this missing
" tenth " leaf in his " twenty-two sheets."

Mr. Spedding, therefore, carefully examined the
volume in the condition in which it was when found
at Northumberland House, and, as his accuracy is
well known, we may be content to rely upon his
evidence in this matter. At any rate it is the best
that we can now get, for as Mr. Frank Burgoyne,
the Librarian of the Lambeth Public Libraries (who
in 1904 edited and published a transcript and
colotype facsimile of the whole of the contents of
the volume) informs us : :' Since Mr. Spedding
wrote, the manuscript has been taken to pieces and
each leaf carefully inlaid in stout paper, and these
have been bound up with a large paper copy of his
pamphlet entitled * A conference of Pleasure.'
The manuscript in its present condition contains
45 leaves, so Mr. Spedding does not appear to have
included the outside page in his enumeration. The
pages are not numbered, and there are no traces of
stitching, or sewing ; it is therefore quite impossible
even to conjecture what was the number of sheets in
the original volume"*

* My italics. The manuscript has been damaged by fire (probably
in 1780), the edges of the pages being much scorched and singed.

188

THE NORTHUMBERLAND MANUSCRIPT

This statement will be found not unimportant
when we come to consider yet another work on
these old manuscripts, also published in 1904, by
Mr. T. Le Marchant Dowse. Mr. Dowse is
anxious to limit the original volume to a quire of 24
sheets. Spedding, he says, " tells us it was a quire
of 22 sheets, [Spedding however, only says it was
folded double " as in an ordinary quire of paper "]
but he omits to take into account the outer sheet,
which was of the same fold of paper and served as
a cover ; this made 23 sheets. Moreover he tells
us leaf 10 was missing (the written matter, however
runs on without a break) ; but as leaf 10 must have
formed one half of a sheet, the other half, in the
latter part of the MS., should also have been missing,
consequently the * quire ' was originally a full
and proper quire of 24 sheets."

But as I have already pointed out, Spedding
evidently includes the missing leaf, which he
numbers " the tenth," in his twenty-two sheets,
equally with the leaf which, as he says, " appears to
have been glued or pasted in." Mr. Dowse 's
ingenious attempt to limit the volume to 24 sheets
therefore fails, and, in the present condition of the
manuscripts, the only safe conclusion is that stated
by Mr. Burgoyne, viz., that "it is quite impossible
even to conjecture what was the number of sheets
in the original volume." But of this more presently.
On the outside page or cover, besides a number of
very interesting scribblings, we find a list which
has been generally looked upon as a table of contents
of the volume as it originally existed. It runs as
follows :

189

BACONIAN ESSAYS

(1) Mr. ffrancis Bacon.

Of tribute or giving what is dew. [With the
four " praises " above mentioned.]

(2) Earle of Arundells letter to the Queen.

(3) Speaches for my lord of Essex at the tylt.

(4) A speach for my lord of Sussex tilt.

(5) Leycester's Common Wealth. Incerto autore.

(6) Orations at Graies Inne revells.

(7) ... Queenes Mate [Probably Letters to the

Queen's Majesty]. By Mr. ffrancis Bacon.

(8) Essaies by the same author.

(9) Rychard the Second.
(10) Rychard the Third,
(n) Asmund and Cornelia.

(12) lie of dogs frmnt [i.e. fragment] by Thomas Nashe.

But, as Mr. Spedding points out, just above the
writing, " Earle of Arundells letter to the Queen, "
stand the words " Philipp against Mounsieur," a
title which he says seems to have been inserted
afterwards, and is imperfectly legible."* This
evidently refers to Sir Philip Sydney's letter to the
Queen dissuading her from marrying the Duke of
Anjou, which is part of the contents of the volume
as it has come down to us. The Gray's Inn Revels
are, no doubt, those of 1594-5 of which the history
is related in the Gesta Grayorum.

Now of this list, besides the four Discourses or
" Praises," only four items are found in the volume
as it at present exists, viz., the " Speaches for my
lord of Essex at the tylt " ; the " Speach for my
lord of Sussex at the tilt " ; " Leycester's Common
Wealth," and Sir Philip Sydney's letter. The

* See Spedding's Introduction, p. xix. It is, I believe, contended
by some that the word here is not " Philipp," but as Mr. Spedding so
read it when the manuscript was very much clearer than it is now, we
may, I think, be content to accept his evidence, more especially as close
to it, a little to the left, stands the word " Phillipp " still plain for all to
read. Mr. Burgoyne, therefore, includes this letter of Sir Philip
Sydney among the subjects mentioned in the supposed list of contents.

190

THE NORTHUMBERLAND MANUSCRIPT

actual contents of the volume in its present condition
are as follows :*

1 i ) Of Tribute , or giving what is due . By Bacon (1592).

(2) Of Magnanimitie or heroicall vertue. By Bacon.

(3) An Advertisement touching private censure. By

Bacon.

(4) An Advertisement touching the controversies of

the church of England. By Bacon (written
1589).

(5) A letter to a French gent : touching ye pro

ceedings in Engl. : in Ecclesiasticall causes
translated out of French into English by W. W.
By Bacon. t

(6) Speeches for my lord oj 'Essex at the tylt, viz., five

speeches spoken in a Device presented by
Essex, and performed before Queen Elizabeth
in 1595. By Bacon.

(7) For the Earl of Sussex at the tilt. By Bacon (1596).

(8) Sir Philip Sydney's letter to the Queen, dissuading

her from marrying the Duke of Anjou. (1580).

(9) Leycester's Common Wealth, imperfect both at

beginning and end (printed 1584).

On comparing these two lists we find also that
four of the articles now contained in the volume
are not mentioned in the list on the outer page,
viz. :

No. 2. Of Magnanimitie.

No. 3. Advertisement touching private censure.

No. 4. Advertisement touching the controversies of

the Church.
No. 5. Letter to a French gent, etc.

On the other hand if this list was really a list of
the original contents of the volume then eight
articles have disappeared from the book, besides

* The items in italics are mentioned in the list on the outside page.
It will be seen that the latest date of any article of the contents is 1596.
Note that six of the nine pieces are by Francis Bacon.

t See Spedding's Introduction, p. xvi.

191

BACONIAN ESSAYS

the missing portions of Leycester's Common
wealth, viz. :

(1) The Earle of Arundell's letter to the Queen.

(2) The Orations at Gray's Inn revels.

(3) An address or letter to the Queen, by Bacon.

(4) Essays by Bacon.

(5) and (6) Shakespeare's plays of Richard II and

Richard III.

(7) Asmund and Cornelia (of which nothing is known).

(8) The He of Dogs, by Thomas Nashe.

Now, on this state of things, Mr. Dowse
vehemently contends that the list on the outside
cover is not, and never was meant to be a " table
of contents/' He asserts that all this matter could
not have been either accidentally lost, or (as seems
much more probable) intentionally abstracted from
the volume. First, because he says the volume
originally consisted of a quire and no more ; but
as I have already said this is a mere conjecture,
which in the face of Mr. Spedding's evidence, is
quite untenable. Secondly, because, " on the said
assumption, the MS, as found, should have shown a
considerable bulge, from top to bottom, alongside
the fold," and Spedding must have seen this
" considerable bulge " if it had been there, and
must have mentioned it if he had seen it ! Mr.
Dowse goes on to say that there is other " evidence
on the point quite sufficient to satisfy reasonable
beings," which is an expression commonly used
when a writer wishes to imply that those who do
not accept his conclusions are not endowed with
the reasoning faculty. Mr. Dowse's idea of
" evidence " is, as I shall show, somewhat peculiar,
but in any case, I do not think many of his readers

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will be much impressed with the " considerable
bulge," or " the silence of Mr. Spedding " line of
argument, especially as Mr. Spedding, though not
mentioning the " bulge/' has definitely put on
record his opinion that the volume may have
originally included much more matter than it now
contains. It is almost certain, for example, that it
contained, with the other speeches written by
Bacon for Essex's Device in 1595, The Squire's
speech in the tilt-yard, as well as the beginning
and the end of Leycester's Common Wealth.
But let us hear Mr. Spedding. After enumerating
the speeches written for this Device, which are now
contained in the volume (viz., The Hermits
fyrst speach : The Hermits second speach : The
Soldier's speach : The Squire's speach), he writes :
1 These are the speeches written by Bacon for a
Device presented by the Earl of Essex on the
Queen's day 1595, concerning which see Letters
and Life of Francis Bacon, vol. I. pp. 374-386. The
principal difference between this copy and that at
Lambeth, from which the printed copy was taken,
is that this does not contain * The Squire's speech
in the tilt-jiard," with which the other begins, and
does contain a short speech from the Hermit — * the
Hermitt's fyrst speach ' — which seems to be a
reply to it. It is possible that the beginning has
been lost, as any number of sheets may have dropped
out at this place, without leaving any evidence of the
fact."

Further on (p. xix), after giving the list of the
titles on the outside cover, which he takes to have
been a table of contents, Mr. Spedding writes :

N 193

BACONIAN ESSAYS

' The principal difficulties which I find in it are,
first, the absence from the list of all allusion to the
Advertisement touching the controversies of the Church
of England, which can never have been separated
from the volume, and has all the appearance of
having been transcribed about the same time, and
is too large a piece to have been overlooked ;
secondly, the absence from the volume itself of all
trace of the Earl of ArundelVs letter to the Queen,
which appears in the list, and thirdly, the misplacing
of the entry of Sir Philip Sydney's Letter against
Monsieur, which stands higher in the list than it
should. All this however may be explained by
a few suppositions, not in themselves improbable,
namely that the transcriber of the first five pieces
left his list of contents incomplete ; that the
transcriber who followed him set down the contents
only of his own portion ; that the first sheet or two
of his transcript has been lost, and that Sydney's
letter had been at first overlooked. I have already
observed that the sheet on which the fifth piece ends
and what is now the sixth begins, is the middle sheet
of the volume ; and therefore if anything came
between these two, it may have been taken out without
leaving any traces of itself. I have noticed also that
Sir Philip's letter has no heading, and may therefore
have been easily overlooked. Now if we may
suppose that the Earl of Arundell's letter, having
been transcribed on a central sheet, has dropped
out, and that Sir Philip's having been overlooked,
the title was entered afterwards in the place where
there was most room, we shall find that the first
four titles represent correctly the rest of the contents

194

THE NORTHUMBERLAND MANUSCRIPT

of the volume. . . . The titles which follow
have nothing corresponding to them in this manu
script, but probably indicate the contents of another
of the same kind, once attached to this and now lost."
Thus Mr. Spedding, who had the great advantage
of seeing the manuscripts as they were found in
1867. But Mr. Le Marchant Dowse will have
nothing of all this. He speaks loftily of the " folly "
of supposing that the list on the outside page was a
table of contents. Apparently he cannot tolerate
the idea that two plays of Shakespeare, before they
found their way into print, should have been
transcribed by the same man, and included in the
same volume, with certain works of Francis Bacon 1
Id sane intolerandum. But if not a table of contents
what is the meaning of this outside list ? How did
it come to be written " at all, at all " ? Well, Mr.
Dowse 's theory is as follows : The supposed
" quire " originally contained only the " Praises."
It came into the possession of the Earl of Northum
berland. " It then came under the control of
somebody (I shall name him hereafter) who jotted
down at intervals the titles of other papers which
he judged worth copying, or which were of interest
as having reference to, or connexion with, or as
having been written by, people whom he knew ;
but, on the one hand, he probably found it difficult
to procure the papers he wanted ; and meanwhile,
on the other hand, papers that he had not previously
thought of were unexpectedly placed at the Earl's
disposal ; and these were copied as they came to
hand." According to this theory, therefore, a
scribe in the employ of the Earl of Northumberland,

195

BACONIAN ESSAYS

entrusted with a paper volume in which four
speeches, composed by Bacon for Lord Essex,
had been transcribed, and very carefully and
beautifully transcribed,* and finding these noted
on the outside cover, which up to that point certainly
had done duty as a " table of contents," amuses
himself by jotting down beneath, and on the same
page, the titles of a number of works which he had
not in his possession but which he " judged worth
copying/' or thought of interest, such as the
orations at Gray's Inn, and Bacon's Essays, and
Shakespeare's plays of Richard II and Richard HI.
These, on this hypothesis, he was never able to
procure, and therefore their titles on the cover stood
for nothing, except as reflections of his inner
consciousness. But, meanwhile, other papers,
" that he had not previously thought of, were
unexpectedly placed at the Earl's disposal ; and
these were copied as they came to hand." This
theory we are asked, nay ordered, to accept on pain
of being dismissed as creatures beyond the pale of
reason. Quite unappalled by that terrible threat I
venture to think that Mr. Dowse's theory is itself
unreasonable. I do not think a scribe entrusted
with a nobleman's manuscript volume, in which his
duty was to enter further transcripts, would be at
all likely to act in such a manner. I think it far
more reasonable to suppose that these works had
been copied or entered, that they were originally
included in the volume, the original dimensions of

* " The Northumberland House Manuscript," says Spedding, '.' is
for the most part remarkably clear and correct ; it is very seldom, that
there can be any doubt what letter is intended, and the mistakes are
very few." See Mr. Burgoyne's Facsimile.

196

THE NORTHUMBERLAND MANUSCRIPT

which it is now impossible to estimate, and that
they were subsequently abstracted, probably for
some very good season. In fact I think the
evidence of Mr. Spedding, the eyewitness, is a
great deal better than the hypothesis and con
jectures of Mr. Dowse.

But the fact is that Mr. Dowse entered upon his
investigation with two preconceived ideas. In the
first place his purpose was to have a tilt at the
Baconians who had founded some arguments on
the close juxtaposition of the names, and certain
of the works, of Bacon and Shakespeare in this
manuscript. And, secondly, his purpose was to
find evidence for his preconceived belief that John
Davies of Hereford was the " scribbler " who had
written so freely on the outside page of the volume.
So much Mr. Dowse, unless I much misunderstand
him, himself confesses. ' The following investi
gation/' he says in his Preface, " was suggested to
me by sundry mistaken notions respecting 'the MSS.
hereinafter examined, which had found their way
into print, and so had caught my eye from time to
time." Mr. Dowse, as will be seen, is violently
anti-Baconian, by which I mean that he is not only
altogether contemptuous of " the Baconian theory,"
but also that he entertains a very low conception
indeed of the personal character of Francis Bacon.
I think, therefore, I have correctly interpreted the
meaning of the above extract. Then as to " the
writer of the scribble," he says, " in point of fact
upon my first scrutiny, several years ago, of
Spedding 's facsimile, I provisionally formed an
opinion as to who the scribbler was." It will be

197

BACONIAN ESSAYS

seen, therefore, that Mr. Dowse set out to prove
that the scribbler was John Davies, though, of a
certainty, the bare inspection of Spedding 's facsimile
of the outer page of the manuscript could not justify
any belief in the matter, and could, at most, only
give occasion for the merest guess.

But before we come to the " scribbler " let us
examine the scribble, and see what date we can
assign to the writings. What Mr. Spedding calls
;' the title page," forming half of the outside sheet,
:< which appears to be the only cover the volume
ever had," is covered all over with the so-called
scribblings. " It contains," says Mr. Dowse, " some
two hundred entries, independently of the
' Praises,' and the list of titles." Mr. Spedding,
Mr. Dowse, and Mr. Burgoyne have reproduced
this leaf in facsimile, and the latter has provided us
with a modern script rendering of it. It may be
said to be divided into two columns. At the top
of the right-hand column stands the name " Mr.
ffrancis Bacon," followed by the list of " Praises,"
which again is succeeded by what Mr. Spedding
has called the table of contents. At the top of the
left-hand column stands the name of Nevill, twice
written, and not far below it is the punning motto
of the Nevill family, Ne vile velis. " Perhaps,"
says Mr. Burgoyne, " this gives a clue to the original
ownership of the volume as it seems to indicate that
the collection was written for or was the property
of some member of the Nevill family." It is
suggested that this was Sir Henry Nevil (1564-
1615), Bacon's nephew, and a friend of Essex.
Then high up, in the middle of the page, occur the

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THE NORTHUMBERLAND MANUSCRIPT

words " Anthony Comfort and consorte," which is,
without doubt, as I think, an allusion to Anthony
Bacon. Lower down in the left-hand column are the
words :

Multis annis iam transactis
Nulla fides est in pactis
Mell in ore Verba lactis
ffell in Corde ffraus in factis ;

as to which Mr. Burgoyne points out that among the
Tenison MSS. at Lambeth Palace is a letter from
Rodolphe Bradley to Anthony Bacon in which he
writes : " Your gracious speeches . . .be the
words of a faithfull friende, and not of a courtiour,
who hath Mel in ore et verba lactis, sed fel in corde
et fraus in factis*

But the most interesting of these writings are
those which refer to Shakespeare. In the right-
hand column, somewhat below the centre, occurs
the reference to a letter to the Queen's Majesty
" By Mr. ffrauncis Bacon." Below this we read
" Essaies by the same author." Then the name
* William Shakespeare," with the word " Shake-
spear " just below, at the right-hand edge of the
page. Then follows " Ry chard the second," with
" ffrauncis " close under the word " second." Then
:< Ry chard the third." Then, towards the bottom
of the right-hand column, occurs the name " William
Shakespeare " thrice repeated,! and besides
this we find " Shakespeare," " Shakespear,"

* Mr. Dowse says that the only explanation of this entry that he has
heard is that it was suggested by Bacon's behaviour in the Essex case.
I have, however, heard another, viz., that it is Bacon's own reflection
on the deceits and vanities of life.

t " The name of Shakespeare," writes Mr. Spedding (p. xxv.) " is
spelt in every case as it was always printed in those days, and not as he
himself in any known case ever wrote it."

199

BACONIAN ESSAYS

" Shakespe," " Shak " (several times), " Sh "
(several times), " William/' " Will," and so on ;
just as we find in other places " Mr. ffrauncis
Bacon," " Mr. Ffrauncis," " ffrauncis," " Bacon,"
etc., several times repeated.

Upon this Mr. Spedding writes : " That Richard
the second, and Richard the third, are meant for
the titles of Shakespeare's plays so named, I infer
from the fact — of which the evidence may be seen
in the facsimile — that the list of contents being
now complete, the writer (or more probably another
into whose possession the volume passed) has
amused himself with writing down promiscuously
the names and phrases that most ran in his head ;
and that among these the name of William Shake
speare was the most prominent, being written eight
or nine times over for no other reason that can be
discerned. That the name of Mr. Frauncis Bacon,
which is also repeated several times, should have
been used for the same kind of recreation requires
no explanation ; its position at the top of the page
would naturally suggest it."

But these are not the only Shakespearean
references which we find on this remarkable page.
About the centre occurs the word " honorificabile-
tudine" a reminiscence of the " honorificicabili-
tudinitatibus " of Love's Labour's Lost. And lower
down in the left-hand column we have,

revealing

day through

every Crany

peepes and . . .

see

Shak

200

THE NORTHUMBERLAND MANUSCRIPT

which seems to be an imperfect reminiscence of the
line in Lucrece, " revealing day through every cranny
spies,'5* and is a very interesting contemporary
notice of the poem which was first published in
1594 with the name " William Shakespeare "
subscribed to the dedication addressed to the Earl
of Southampton.

Here, then we have the names and the works of
Shakespeare and Bacon brought into curiously close
juxtaposition in (as it will presently be seen) a
contemporary document. Here are speeches and
Essays written by Bacon, and Plays by " William
Shakespeare," put together in the same volume
(pace Mr. Dowse), and we find some penman with
these two names so much in his mind that he writes
them both, either fully or in abbreviated form, many
times over on the outside sheet of the paper book.

Now as to the date of these writings, Mr. Spedding
states that he could find nothing, either in the
" scribblings " or in what remains of the book
itself, to indicate a date later than the reign of
Queen Elizabeth. Mr. Burgoyne gives reasons
for concluding that the manuscript was written
not later than January, 1597, and he says " it seems
more probable that no part of the manuscript was
written after 1596." There are several reasons
for assigning this date to the work. One is that the
outside list shows that the volume originally con
tained a copy of Bacon's Essays. These — the ten
short essays which appeared in the first edition —

" Peeps " certainly seems better than " spies," and it has been
suggested, therefore, that this gives the line as the poet first conceived
it, the alteration having been made to meet the exigency of rhyme.

201

BACONIAN ESSAYS

were published in January, 1597,* after having been
extensively circulated in manuscript. After they
were printed it is not likely that the expensive and
imperfect method of copying in manuscript would
have been resorted to.f Again the plays of Richard
II and Richard HI were first printed in 1597,
" and issued/' says Mr. Burgoyne, " at a published
price of sixpence each." After that date, therefore,
it seems reasonable to suppose that they would not
have been transcribed, or noted for transcription.
It is not unimportant to remember that when they
were first issued the name of Shakespeare was not
on them. In the editions of 1598, however, the
hyphenated name, " William Shake-speare," appears
on each, and this is the first appearance of that name
on any play. Nash's " Isle of Dogs " referred to
in the outside list was produced at Henslowe's
theatre in 1597, but never printed. Of course all
the contents of the volume may not have been
written in one year, and it is impossible to fix the
exact date of the scribblings. But if, as it appears
only reasonable to believe, the Shakespearean plays
were transcribed (or even only noted for trans
cription) before 1597, we have here references to
:< Shakespeare " as the author of these plays before
his name had come before the public as a dramatic
author at all, and more than a year before his name
appeared on any title page ; and, what is certainly

* " Bacon," writes Mr. A. W. Pollard, " as we should expect,
reckoning his year from January." The copy in the British Museum
was bought Septimo die Februarii 39 E. R.

t This argument holds even if, as Mr. Dowse seeks to prove, the
transcription was never carried out in the Northumberland volume.
No penman would have noted the Essays for future copying if they were
already in print.

202

THE NORTHUMBERLAND MANUSCRIPT

remarkable, we find this, at that time little known
name closely associated with the name of Francis
Bacon.

Who was the writer of the scribble ? Mr. Dowse
would identify him with John Davies of Hereford,
who was born a year after Shakspere of Stratford
and died two years after him. This John Davies
was of Magdalen College, Oxford, a poet, and,
says Mr. Dowse, " a competent scholar." He
took up penmanship as a calling, and " became the
most famous teacher of his age ; and he taught,
not only in many noble and gentle families, but in
the royal family itself, for in those days not even
nobles and princes were ashamed to write well."
How we could wish that William Shakspere of
Stratford had been among his pupils ! But what
is the evidence that Davies was " the Scribbler "?
Let Mr. Dowse state it in his own words : " His
numerous sonnets and other poems, as well as his
many dedications, addressed to people of note,
while friendly, are also respectful and manly
(though he could neatly flatter) : and their number
shows the extent of the circle in which he moved.
Within this circle, or rather a section of it, I felt
myself to be, while dealing with the page of scribble ;
and that feeling has been amply justified out of the
mouth, or rather by the pen of John Davies himself,
for his Works show that he was directly and closely
acquainted with nearly all the persons his con
temporaries there mentioned ; with some indeed
he was friendly and familiar. The ovenvhelming
evidence of this fact is of itself sufficient to identify
Davies as the scribbler " (p. 8).

203

BACONIAN ESSAYS

This strikes one as rather curious logic. Davies
was closely acquainted with nearly all the persons
mentioned in :< the page of scribble." Ergo,
Davies wrote the scribble !

I hardly think a judge would direct a jury to pay
much attention to " evidence " of this description.
I have no prepossessions whatever against John
Davies of Hereford. I am perfectly willing to
believe that he was " the scribbler " ; but unless
some better proof than this can be adduced, I fear
we must regard Mr. Dowse 's theory as mere
hypothesis. However, Mr. Dowse tells us that
he has other evidence. He refers to Davies 's
[< Dedicatory and Consolatory Epistle," addressed
to the ninth Earl of Northumberland, which is to
be found in the Grenville Library at the British
Museum. This, he says, is ".with some verbal
exceptions written in Davies 's beautiful court-
hand." And he further tells us that " no one who
has studied the scribble and then turns to that
' Consolatory Epistle ' can fail to recognise the same
hand at a glance." Here I am not competent to
express an opinion, for I have not examined the
Epistle in question, nor have I seen the original
of the Northumberland MS., and even if I had
inspected both I fear I should be in no better case,
for nothing is more dangerous than this identifi
cation by comparison of handwriting. Anyone
who has served an apprenticeship at the Bar knows
how perilous it is to trust to the evidence of " expert
witnesses " in this matter. I well remember a
case in which the two most famous handwriting
experts of their day, in this country at any rate,

204

THE NORTHUMBERLAND MANUSCRIPT

Messrs. Inglis and Netherclift, swore point blank
one against the other, with equal confidence as to
certain disputed handwriting, so that the judge felt
constrained to tell the jury that they must leave the
" expert evidence " out of the question altogether.
In the Dreyfus case too, the experts, the renowned
M. Bertillon included, seem to have come utterly
to grief. One is reminded of the Judge's famous
categories of " liars," viz., " liars, damned liars,
and expert witnesses ! " Therefore I think it well
to cultivate a little healthy scepticism when Mr.
Dowse identifies "at a glance " John Davies 's
" beautiful court-hand " with the scribble of the
Northumberland MS. Mr. Dowse quotes Thomas
Fuller to the effect that " John Davies was the
greatest master of the pen that England in his age,
beheld " ; and goes on to say: " His merits are
summarized under the heads of rapidity, beauty,
compactness, and variety of styles ; which last he
so mixed that he made them appear a hundred ! '
I think one ought to be more than ordinarily
cautious in judging of the handwriting of a man
who had a hundred different styles. Yet Mr.
Dowse undertakes to tell us which of the entries
on the outer leaf of the volume are by John Davies,
and which by somebody else ! I repeat I am quite
willing to accept John Davies as the scribbler, but
I fear that at present I must regard the hypothesis
as " not proven." I fear Mr. Dowse may have
been a little too anxious to find the verification of
his preconceived opinion, on his " first scrutiny
of Spedding's facsimile," that Davies was the man
who wrote the scribble. However the fact that

205

BACONIAN ESSAYS

Davies seems to have been for some years in the
service of Henry Percy, ninth Earl of Northumber
land, as teacher of his family (that is, I presume
mainly as writing master*), and possibly as copyist
lends some probability to Mr. Dowse's surmise.

Mr. Dowse speaks in very bitter terms of Francis
Bacon, perhaps unconsciously allowing his bitter
ness to be accentuated (as we so often find to be the
case) by his abhorrence of the Baconian theory of
authorship. It is, at any rate, so strong as to lead
him into criticism so obviously, and indeed absurdly,
unfair as to carry its own refutation with it, and to
impair very seriously the value of the critic's
judgment. He assumes that Davies wrote the
words " Anthony Comfort, and Consorte," though
why the writing master, who was, according to the
hypothesis, in the service of the Earl of Northumber
land at the time, should have made this entry it is
rather difficult to conjecture. However, says Mr.
Dowse, it " shows that he was aware of the relations
subsisting between the two brothers — that Anthony
was the companion and support of Francis the
spendthrift, whom to keep out of prison he
impoverished himself, and then did not succeed.

* " To Algernoun, Lord Percy," the Earl's son and heir, whom he
addresses as " My right noble Pupill and joy of my heart," Davies
writes, " The Italian hand I teach you." Would that he could have
taught it to William Shakspere of Stratford ! It was in his time, says
Mr. Dowse, " fast superseding the old court-hand." It was, certainly,
fast superseding the old German, or " Old English," hand in which
Shakspere wrote. And the author of Twelfth Night must have known
the value of that Italian hand which was at that time rapidly " winning
its way in cultured society," as Sir Sidney Lee tells us, for does not he
make Malvolio say, " I think we do know the sweet Roman hand " ?
But Mr. Dowse does not seem to have known the meaning of the term
" court-hand," which is a technical term for the scripts employed by
lawyers in drawing up charters and other legal documents, and can very
seldom be described as " beautiful."

206

THE NORTHUMBERLAND MANUSCRIPT

It also suggests a rebuke of the toadyism of Francis
in selecting and, more suo, grossly flattering the
terrible old termagant on the throne as the
' worthiest person ' in preference to such a
brother." When we remember that " the praise
of his soveraigne " was, with the other speeches,
written in 1592, to be spoken at a Device presented
by Essex before Elizabeth (the idea being, of course,
to conciliate the Queen in favour of Essex, and the
very fact of Bacon's authorship being concealed),
the suggestion that Davies had in his mind to rebuke
Bacon for his " toadyism " because of this purely
dramatic performance is, I submit, sufficiently
absurd. But that is far from being the worst. I
make no complaint whatever that Mr. Dowse will
have nothing at all to do with Spedding's attempted
vindication of Bacon in the matter of Essex, or that
he will make no allowance whatever for the exigencies
of Bacon's position as counsel in the service of the
Crown. Everyone has the right to form his own
opinion upon that, as upon other matters of
historical controversy. But, says Mr. Dowse, in
view of the sentiments which Davies entertained
with regard to the families of Northumberland and
Essex, " we can imagine how he would feel towards
those who were instrumental in bringing Essex to
the block. . . . The man that did more than
anyone else towards securing the death of Essex
was Francis Bacon, but the MS. was planned, and
probably in great part executed, before that repulsive
procedure, or the contents might have been very
different." In plain English, Davies, the assumed
writer of the scribble, must, after the Essex affair,

207

BACONIAN ESSAYS

have felt nothing but hatred and scorn for Francis
Bacon, and had Essex's death taken place before
this manuscript was planned, and (probably) in
great part executed, " the contents might have been
very different " ; the meaning of which is, I suppose,
either that Bacon's works would have been omitted
altogether, or that the writer would have put on
record " a bit of his mind " with regard to the
author. But it so happens that some years after
this, viz., about 1610, Davies published, in his
Scourge of Folly, a sonnet addressed to Bacon
in which he speaks of him in highly eulogistic terms.
How does Mr. Dowse explain this ? I will place
his remarks before the reader, and afterwards quote
the sonnet in full, and then ask judgment on this
very remarkable style of anti-Baconian criticism.
" It seems, " writes Mr. Dowse, " that Bacon had
recently made him (Davies) a present of money,
or more probably had paid him lavishly for some
assistance. But the poet's gratitude takes a singular

form :

Thy bounty, and the beauty of thy Witt
Compells my pen to let fall shining ink !

Further on he speaks of Bacon c keeping the Muse's
company for sport twixt grave affairs ' — an apology
for Bacon's amateur verses."

Now, first of all be it observed that the italics
and the note of admiration in the above quotations
are Mr. Dowse 's own contribution.* And what

* The word " bounty " indeed, as the other nouns, " Beauty,"
" Bays," etc., is printed in italics in accordance with the practice of the
times. That does not, of course, imply that any extra emphasis is
on the word. Mr. Dowse omits the italics in the case of the word
' beauty," but emphasises " bounty " and " " compells ! "

208

THE NORTHUMBERLAND MANUSCRIPT

is the suggestion, again to put it into plain English ?
It is that Da vies, though in his heart regarding
Bacon with contempt and abhorrence, had accepted
a large sum of money from him, and therefore felt
compelled, however reluctantly, to write a poem in
his honour ! Observe that Mr. Dowse in other
places speaks of Davies in the highest terms, and
cites him as a witness of unimpeachable honesty
and honour in favour of Shakspere, player and
author. Yet he allows his bitter feelings against
Bacon to carry him so far that rather than recognise
what must be plain to every impartial reader, viz.,
that Davies was writing ex animo as a friend and
admirer of Bacon, he would have us believe, in
vilification of his own witness, that the poet was
induced by filthy lucre to write entirely insincere,
and, therefore, particularly nauseous flattery of a
man whom he hated and despised !

And now I will set before the reader the sonnet
in extenso (preserving the italics as in the original),
and ask him whether there is any possible reason to
suppose that it is not an honest expression of the
writer's genuine admiration for Bacon :

To the royall, ingenious, and all learned Knight,
Sir Francis Bacon.

Thy bounty and the Beauty of thy Witt
Comprisd in Lists of Law and learned Arts,
Each making thee for great Imployment fitt
Which now thou hast (though short of tliy deserts)
Compells my pen to let fall shining Inke
And to bedew the Bates that deck thy Front ;
And to thy health in Helicon to drinke
As to her Bellamour the Muse is wont :
O 209

BACONIAN ESSAYS

For, them dost her embozom ; and dost use
Her company for sport twixt grave affaires :
So utterst Law the lively er through thy Muse.
And for that all thy Notes are sweetest Aires ;
My Muse thus notes thy worth in ev'ry Line,
With yncke which thus she sugers ; so to shine.

Now this " sugred sonnet " is I think a very
remarkable one. Considering the inflated style in
use for laudatory poems of the time, it is written
in singularly moderate language, and I think no
reader, after considering it as a whole, could possibly
put upon it the malignant construction suggested
by Mr. Dowse, unless his judgment be warped
by very bitter prejudice. But it is not only an honest
eulogy of Bacon as a man, it is valuable as bearing
witness to the fact, doubtless well known to Da vies,
that Bacon was a poet. Mr. Dowse speaks con
temptuously of Davies's " apology for Bacon's
amateur verses, " but I fear Mr. Dowse's sight is
distorted by a fragment of that broken magic mirror
whereof Hans Anderson has written so charmingly.
Davies drinks to Bacon's health in " Helicon " —
not in " the waters of the Spaw," but in " the
waters of Parnassus,"

As to her Bellamour the Muse is wont.

It is true that Bacon was engaged in ' grave
affaires " — he had been made Solicitor-General
in 1607 — and therefore, though he wooed the Muse,
could only ' use her company ' ' by way of re
creation in intervals of more serious employment.
Nevertheless he is fully recognised as her " Bell-

amour."

210

THE NORTHUMBERLAND MANUSCRIPT

We may be grateful to Mr. Dowse for once more
calling attention to this very high and remarkable
tribute of praise.

Mr. Dowse goes on to cite Davies 's testimony —
which is here, of course, to be taken very seriously
indeed — to the excellence of William Shakspere.
" In his ' Microcosmos,' in a stanza beginning
' Players, I love/ Davies singles out Shakespeare
and Burbage for his highest admiration. He
attributes to them * wit (i.e. intellect), courage,
good shape, good partes, and ALL GOOD ! ' "

Now I will again set forth the lines in extenso
in order that the reader may form his own opinion
as to their meaning and evidentiary value. It is
to be observed that Davies does not mention
Shakespeare (or Shakspere) or Burbage by name,
but there are, in a marginal note to the third
line, the letters W. S. R. B., which are generally
interpreted as bearing reference to those two
11 deserving men."* Whether he attributes to
them all the excellencies so largely writ in Mr.
Dowse 's interpretation the reader shall judge.
Why Mr. Dowse has written the words " all good "
in such startlingly large letters I am unable to say,
and I really do not think the poet, who according
to Mr. Dowse was of a very strict, if not sancti
monious, turn of mind, intended to attribute ALL
GOOD to poor Will Shakspere and Dick Burbage ;
while as to his being " over exquisite in depreciating
their calling," this fault — if fault it be — he certainly
shares with all the other writers of his time

* I do not know what evidence there is that these initials were written
by Davies himself, and were not additions made by some other hand.

211

BACONIAN ESSAYS

concerning the profession and status of the Players.
Here is the poem published in the Microcosmos
or " The Discovery of the Little World, with the
Government thereof," 1603 :

Players, I love yee, and your Qualitie,

As ye are Men, that passtime not abus'd ;

And some I love for painting , poesie,

And say fell Fortune cannot be excus'd,

That hath for better uses you refus'd :

Wit, Courage, good shape, good paries, and all good,

As long as al these goods are no worse us'd,

And though the stage doth staine pure gentle bloud,

Yet generous yee are in minde and moode.

Mr. Dowse follows this by a reference to Davies's
poem addressed to

Our English Terence, Mr. Will.
Shake-speare.*

which appeared, with the sonnet to Bacon already
quoted, in the Scourge of Folly (1610-11). On this
poem Mr. Dowse waxes eloquent. This, he tells
us " in short compass gives us a number of important
particulars about him [Shakespeare]. Thus, he
acted ' kingly parts,' which means lordly manners
and bearing and elocution ; and if he had not played
those parts (the stage again !)f he would have been
a fit companion for a King ; indeed he would have
been a king among the general ruck of mankind.
He had then (as now) his detractors, but he was
above detraction, and never railed in return ; for he
had a ' reigning wit/ i.e. a sovereign intellect."

I will quote this poem also. The Scourge of Folly
by the way, is, we read, a work " consisting of

* Mr. Dowse omits the hyphen.

t This parenthesis is inserted by Mr. Dowse.

212

THE NORTHUMBERLAND MANUSCRIPT

Satyricall Epigramms and others." I fancy there
is a good deal of the " Satyricall " in the following :

Some say (good Will) which I, in sport, do sing,
Hadst thou not plaid some Kingly parts in sport,
Thou hadst bin a companion for a King ;
And, beene a King among the meaner sort.
Some others raile ; but, raile as they think fit,
Thou hast no rayling, but a raigning Wit.
And honesty thou sow'st, which they do reape ;
So, to increase their Stocke which they do keepe.

So Davies, singing " in sport, " suggests that
according to the saying of some, if the Player had
not been a Player he might have been a companion
for a King (I rather suspect some esoteric meaning
here to which, at this date, we cannot penetrate),
and have been himself a King " among the meaner
sort." As Miss L. Toulmin Smith writes (Ingleby's
Centurie of Pray se, p. 94) " it seems likely [? certain]
that these lines refer to the fact that Shakespere was
a player, a profession that was then despised and
accounted mean." The poem, of course, has some
value for the supporters of the Stratfordian faith,
for, if Davies is here writing in sober seriousness,
and with no ironical arriere pensee, it certainly seems
to imply that he supposed " Mr. Will Shake-speare,
our English Terence," to be identical with player
Shakspere. To which the anti- Stratfordian would
reply that, if he did so mean, he was misled, as
others were, by the use of the pseudonym Shake
speare. Poems and Plays were published in that
name " as it was always printed in those days, and
not as he [Shakspere] himself in any known case
ever wrote it."* In any case Davies 's lines can
hardly be said to be the high eulogy of Player

* Spedding's Introduction, p. xxv.

213

BACONIAN ESSAYS

Shakspere that Mr. Dowse would have them to
be.*

A word more and I have done with Mr. Dowse.
As I have already said, that which I still venture
to call the " table of contents," on the outer page
of the paper volume, is headed by Bacon 's " Of
tribute/' and a list of his four " Praises. " Now,
about an inch below the last " Praise " occurs the
word fraunces, and a little below and to the right of
that is the word turner. These we are told are
" in different hands/' though whether or not they
are samples of Davies's hundred different styles it
would seem rather difficult to say. Mr. Dowse,
however, thinks that fraunces was written by the
copyist of the " Praises," and turner by ' the
scribbler," and that the latter word was " ap
parently intended to stand as if related in some
way to fraunces." He then tells us how pondering
over this a brilliant idea struck him. In the middle
of the reign of James I occurred the murder of Sir
Thomas Overbury, instigated by Frances Howard,
Lady Essex, and one of this lady's " principal
agents " was a Mrs. Anne Turner. What can be
clearer than that we have here a reference to these
two notorious criminals ? It follows from this that
" the MS. was ' knocking about/ or at any rate
open for additions to the scribble on the cover, as
late as 1615. "f

* I have dealt with this Epigram at some length in Is there a Shake
speare Problem ? at pp. 295, 353, and Appendix A. p. 559. So far as I
know there is no evidence that Davies knew either Dick Burbage or
Will Shakespere personally On March 28, 1603, Bacon wrote to
Davies asking him to use his influence with King James in the writer's
favour, and concluding with the words, " so desiring you to be good to
concealed poets." (Spedding. Lord Bacon's Letters and Life, iii. 65.)

f Dowse pp. 4 and 10.

214

THE NORTHUMBERLAND MANUSCRIPT

This is going to one's conclusion per saltum with
a vengeance. It is to be observed that fraunces is
written just under the ffrauncis of " Mr. ffrauncis
Bacon/' and just above that stands " Mr. Ffrauncis."
It seems very probable therefore, that fraunces is
only written as a variety of, or at least suggested by,
the name " ffrauncis," though Mr. Burgoyne does
not seem to be right in transcribing it in the latter
form. The idea that it stands for the " Christian
name " of Lady Essex, and " turner " for the
surname of her ' principal agent " seems an
altogether wild one, and I should imagine that no
serious critic would seek to fix the date of any part
of the scribble by such a hare-brained supposition.*

I turn then from Mr. Dowse 's singularly in-
judicial tract to Mr. Burgoyne's more sober
comment. " As to the penman who actually wrote
the manuscript," says Mr. Burgoyne, " nothing
certain is known. The writing on the contents
page is chiefly in one hand, with occasional words
in another, and a few words mostly scrawled across
the page at an angle appear to be written by a third.
The main body of the work is in two or more hand*
writings, and the difference is especially to be noted
in * Leycester's Commonwealth,' which appears
to have been|written in a hurry, for the writing has
been^overspaced in some pages and overcrowded
mothers, as^if different~penmen had been employed.

* If we were to adopt this theory we should have to put the date for
the " knocking about " of the MS. even later than that assigned by
Mr. Dowse, for though Overbury's murder was discovered in 1615,
Lady Somerset, as she then was, was not committed to the Tower till
April, 1616, and it is not probable if turner stands for Anne Turner,
that that name would be written till after the trial had brought it pro
minently before the public.

215

BACONIAN ESSAYS

There are also noticeable breaks on folios 64 and
88, and the difference in penmanship on these pages
is specially remarkable. This points to the
collection having been written at a literary workshop
or professional writer's establishment. It is a
fact worthy of notice, that Bacon and his brother
Anthony were interested in a business of the kind
about the time suggested for the date of the writing
of this book. Mr. Spedding states : — * " Anthony
Bacon appears to have served [Essex] in a capacity
very like that of a modern under-secretary of State,
receiving all letters which were mostly in cipher
in the first instance ; forwarding them (generally
through his brother Francis's hands) to the Earl,
deciphered and accompanied with their joint
suggestions ; and finally, according to the in
structions thereupon returned, framing and dis
patching the answers. Several writers must have
been employed to carry out with promptitude such
work as here outlined, and we find in a letter from
Francis Bacon to his brother,! dated January
25th, 1594, that the clerks were also employed upon
other work. ... * I have here an idle pen
or two ... I pray send me somewhat else for
them to write out besides your Irish collection.'
etc., etc.

In a well-known letter to Tobie Mathew, Bacon
writes : '" My labours are now most set to have
those works, which I had formerly published . . .
well translated into Latin by the help of some
good pens that forsake me not." In this connection

* Life of Bacon vol. i, p. 250-1.
t Ibid. vol. i, p. 349.

216

THE NORTHUMBERLAND MANUSCRIPT

Mr. Burgoyne writes : " It is worthy of notice that
in * The Great Assises holden in Parnassus by
Apollo and his Assessours,' printed in 1645, the
1 Chancellor ' is declared to be * Lord Verulam,'
and ' Ben Johnson ' is described as the * Keeper
of the Trophonian Denne.' "* " It seems not
unlikely, " says Mr. Burgoyne, " that this literary
workshop, was the source of the * Verulamian
Workmanship ' which is referred to by Isaac
Gruter in a letter to Dr. William Rawley (Bacon's
secretary and executor) written from Maestricht,
and dated March 20, 1655. This letter was written
in Latin, and both the original and the translation
are printed in ' Baconiana, or certain genuine
Remains of Sir Francis Bacon/ London, 1679."
Mr. Burgoyne gives the following extract :

" If my Fate would permit me to live according
to my Wishes I would flie over into England, that
I might behold whatsoever remaineth, in your
cabinet of the Verulamian Workmanship, and at
least make my eyes witnesses of it, if the possession
of the Merchandize be yet denied to the Publick.
. . . At present I will support the Wishes of
my impatient desire, with hope of seeing, one Day,
those [issues] which being committed to faithful
Privacie, wait the time till they may safely see the
Light, and not be stifled in their Birth."

This letter, we note in passing, shows us
that in the Verulamian literary Workshop certain
" Merchandize " was produced which was " denied
to the public " — that in fact (as we know by other

* We know from Archbishop Tenison's Remains that Ben Jonson
was one of Bacon's " good pens." Baconiana 1679, p. 60.

217

BACONIAN ESSAYS

evidence to have been the case) there were many
writings of Bacon " committed to faithful Privacie "
— to Rawley e.g. — which were to be kept un
published till they could " safely see the light/'
but which, most unfortunately, were lost or
destroyed.

The suggestion, therefore, is that this paper
volume, now known as the Northumberland MS.,
was a product of the famous Verulamian Workshop
or Scriptorium, and Mr. Bompas adopting (with
too great facility as I think) Mr. Dowse 's hypothesis
that " the scribbler " was John Davies of Hereford,
and referring to the known fact that the " Praises "
were written for Essex's Device in 1592, points out
that at that date John Davies was only 27 and at the
beginning of his career, and that it is " fifteen years
later, in 1607, that an entry appears in the North
umberland accounts of a payment showing his
employment by the Earl." Mr. Bompas, therefore,
suggests that in 1592 Davies might have been in
Bacon's employ ; he seems, however to have over
looked the fact that, according to Mr. Dowse, the
" Praises " were not written by Davies, since they
are " in a totally different hand."* The one fact
which emerges is that we really do not know who
wrote any part of the Manuscript, but that it was
written for Bacon by one or more of his secretaries
seems entirely probable, seeing that six of the nine
pieces which now form its contents are transcripts
of Bacon's works, then unpublished. How Bacon,
or his secretary, came into possession of two

* See articles in the modern Baconiana for July, 1904, and April,
1905, on Bacon's Scrivenery.

218

THE NORTHUMBERLAND MANUSCRIPT

unpublished plays of Shakespeare, is a matter for
speculation.

As to the " scribble " itself Mr. Spedding writes :
" At the present time, if the waste leaf on which a
law stationer's apprentice tries his pens were
examined, I should expect to find on it the name
of the poet, novelist, dramatic author, or actor of
the day, mixed with snatches of the last new song,
and scribblings of ' My dear Sir/ ' Yours sincerely,'
and ' This Indenture witnesseth.' And this is
exactly the sort of thing which we have here."
Mr. Dowse demurs to this, for, says he, " the cases
are not parallel : there is nothing trivial or vulgar
in our scribbler : he was a serious and even religious
man : the subjects that interest him are lofty, and
like his acquaintance noble." I will not offer an
opinion on this point, viz., as to whether the
scribbler was merely an idle penman, or " a serious
and religious "' penman, but, however that may
be, I do not think that Mr. Spedding Js analogy
holds good. " A law stationer's apprentice " might
certainly exercise his pen on a " waste leaf " as Mr.
Spedding suggests, but an outer sheet of a paper
volume in which works of importance, or so
considered, were transcribed, the whole volume
being stitched together, can hardly be described
as a waste leaf. In days when printing was far
less common than it is now such a volume would be
valuable. Moreover, on the outside leaf were
written the contents of the volume. A law
stationer's apprentice would hardly dare to
exercise his idle pen on the outside skin of a newly-
engrossed deed. I am inclined, therefore, to agree

219

BACONIAN ESSAYS

with Mr. Dowse that the scribblings were to a
certain extent " serious. " There is method in
their madness. And they are such " acts of
ownership," that the scribbler must have had a
complete dominium over the document.

I have been long, and I fear, tedious over this
curious work, but the more one considers Mr.
Dowse's tract the more does one find it provocative
of criticism. I will now leave the regions of
imagination for those of fact. Whether or not
John Davies of Hereford was :< the Scribbler "
seems to me of comparatively little importance.*
What is of importance is this : — We have here an
undoubtedly Elizabethan manuscript volume. Its
contents, as they have come down to us, are nine
articles, out of which seven are by Bacon. It
seems, therefore very reasonable to believe that
the volume was written for Bacon and was perhaps
a product of the " Verulamian workshop. " Very
possibly it was presented by him either to the Earl
of Northumberland, or to Sir Henry Neville, his
own nephew. It is quite reasonable to believe
that among the contents of the volume, as it
originally stood, were the two Shakespearean plays,
Richard II and Richard HI. In any case these
were noted on the outer leaf either as having been
transcribed, or for future transcription. Such note
would not, in all probability, have been made after
1597, when these plays were first (anonymously)
published, at the price of sixpence each. At that
date " Shakespeare " was unknown to the public as

* Some think the scribbler was Bacon himself, which, if true, is
certainly of no little importance.

220

THE NORTHUMBERLAND MANUSCRIPT

a dramatic author, for not a play had as yet been
published under that name. Here then we have
the names and the works of Bacon and Shakespeare
associated, in close juxtaposition, in a contem
poraneous manuscript. Further, the transcriber
of, at any rate, part of the work, writing not idly
but with serious thought, exercises his pen by
writing the names, or parts of the names of Shake
speare and Bacon, over and over again, on the
outside sheet. * William Shakespeare," the author
of Richard II and Richard III, seems to be a name
familiar to him, although those plays had not as yet
been published, and indeed were not published
under the name of " Shake-speare " till 1598. He
writes the name of " Shakespeare " "as it was
always printed," and not as Shakspere of Stratford
" in any known case ever wrote it." And not
content with associating thus closely the names of
Shakespeare and Bacon, on a volume containing
some works by both these writers, if two they
really were, he must needs, on the same outer sheet,
quote a line, slightly varied, from Lucrece, and a
word from Love's Labour's Lost. No other name
of poet, or actor, appears upon " the Scribble "
as distinct from the table of contents. It is all
either Shakespeare or Bacon.

If a dishonest Baconian could fabricate fictitious
evidence in the same way as the forger Ireland did
for Shakspere, it seems to me that he might well
endeavour to concoct such a document as this.
But the Northumberland MS. is an undoubtedly
genuine document, and it is but natural that the

" Baconians " should make the most of it. — G.G.

221

FINAL NOTE

THERE is one argument in support of the con
tention that Bacon was the author of Venus and
Adonis which seems to me to deserve more attention
than it has hitherto received.

It was, I believe, first put forward by the
late Reverend Walter Begley, of St. John's College,
Cambridge, in his book, Is it Shakespeare ? *
— a work which every one interested in the Shake
speare problem ought to read, because it is replete
with both information and amusement, and there
is hardly a dull page in it. The argument is derived
from the Satires of Marston and Hall, our early
English satirists, of the sixteenth century, who
wrote in bitter vein the one against the other.
Both of them have a good deal to say concerning
one Labeo, which is a pseudonym for some
anonymous writer of the time. Now in 1598
Marsten published a poem founded on the lines
and model of Venus and Adonis, which he
called " Pigmalion's Image " (sic) — a love poem,
not a satire — and as an appendix to it he wrote
some lines " in prayse of his precedent Poem,"
where " Pigmalion " had, according to the old

* John Murray, 1903.

223

BACONIAN ESSAYS

legend, succeeded in bringing the image he had
wrought out of ivory to life, and in this appendix
occur the following lines :

And in the end (the end of love I wot),
Pigmalion hath a jolly boy begot.
So Labeo did complaine his love was stone,
Obdurate, flinty, so relentlesse none ;
Yet Lynceus knowes that in the end of this
He wrought as strange a metamorphosis.

Now compare the following lines from Venus
and Adonis (199-200) :

Art thou obdurate, flinty, hard as steel —
Nay, more than flint, for stone at rain relenteth.

Here we have Labeo 's complaint almost word
for word, and we are reminded that at the end
of Venus and Adonis there was the " strange
metamorphosis " of Adonis into a flower, quite
as strange as that of " Pigmalion 's Image."

Is it not clear, then, that by Labeo is meant
the author of Venus and Adonis ? It may be
said, of course, that it was not the author, but
Venus who complained that Adonis was " obdu
rate, flinty," and relentless, but that is a futile
objection, for Marston evidently puts the words
of Venus into Labeo 's mouth, and it can only be
the author of the poem to whom he alludes.

Who, then, was Labeo ? Well, " these Univer
sity wits," as Mr. Begley writes, " were steeped
in Horace, Juvenal, Persius, and Ovid, and thence
brought forth a nickname whenever an occasion
required it." Now in Horace we read :

Labeone insanior inter
sanos dicatur.

224

FINAL NOTE

and we learn that M. Antistius Labeo was a famous
lawyer, who, it is said, by too much free speaking
had offended the Emperor Augustus.*

But what more have we about this sixteenth
century Labeo ? Well, Bishop Hall in his satires
mentions him several times, and reflects upon
him as a licentious writer who takes care to preserve
his anonymity, and, like the cuttle-fish, involves
himself in a cloud of his own making. Thus
in the second book of his satires, which he called
(after Plautus) Vtrgtdemue, i.e., a bundle of rods,
Hall attacks Labeo in the following words :

For shame ! write better, Labeo, or write none ;
Or betterwrite, or, Labeo, write alone.

(Bk. II, Sat. r)

and he ends this satire thus :

For shame ! write cleanly, Labeo, or write none.

From these lines we may infer, as Mr. Begley
says, that Labeo did not write alone, but in conjunc
tion with, or under cover of, another author, and
also that he did not write " cleanly," but in a
lascivious style, such as the style of Venus and
Adonis, it might be.

But there is a further passage in Hall's
Virgidemice (Book IV, Sat. i) which I must quote :

Labeo is whipp'd and laughs me in the face :
Why ? for I smite, and hide the galled place.
Gird but the Cynick's Helmet on his head,
Cares he for Talus or his flayle of lead ?

Long as the crafty Cuttle lieth sure
In the black Cloude of his thick vomiture ,
Who list complain of wronged faith or fame
When he may shift it to another's name ?

* This Labeo is alluded to as a jurist of eminence in the time of
Augustus by Justinian in his Institutes. See Sandars's Translati
(Longmans, 1869), at p. 18.

P 225

BACONIAN ESSAYS

It would take too long if, in this note, I were
to attempt the explanation of this " Sphinxian "
passage, as Dr. Grosart called it, but the general
meaning seems clear enough, viz : " I, the Satirist,
whip Labeo, but Labeo merely laughs at me, for
he knows he can shift the blame, and the punish
ment, on to another whose name he makes use
of, while he himself lies, like the Cuttle, in the
Cloud of his own vomiture."*

Then, writes Mr. Begley, " Labeo is the writer
of Venus and Adonis ; and as there is every reason
to think that Marston used the name Labeo because
Hall had used it, we are therefore able to infer that
Hall and Marston both mean the same man. We,
therefore, advance another step, and infer that
the author of Venus and Adonis did not write
alone, that he shifted his work to another's name
(certainly a Baconian characteristic), and acted
like a cuttle-fish by interposing a dark cloud between
himself and his pursuers."

But what proof or evidence is there that Labeo
stood for Bacon ? Well, Marston 's Satires were
published, with his " Pigmalion's Image," in 1598,
several months after Hall's first three books of
Virgidemice had appeared, and in his Satire IV,
entitled Reactio, Marston goes through pretty
well the whole list of writers whom Hall had
attacked, and defends them, but, curiously enough,
he seems to take no notice of Hall's attack on

* Mr. Begley suggests (p. 17) that the Cynic's helmet is an allusion
to the Knights of the Helmet, of whom we read in the Gesta Grayorum,
and, as he writes, we know that Bacon was " responsible for this Device
performed at his own Gray's Inn during the year 1594." As to
" Talus " and his flail, see Spenser's Fairy Queen, Bk. V, Cant, i,
St. 12.

226

FINAL NOTE

Labeo, though that attack was a marked and
recurrent one. But, says Mr. Begley, " Labeo
is there, but concealed in an ingenious way by
Marston, and passed over in a line that few would
notice or comprehend. But when it is noticed
it becomes one of the most direct proofs we have
on the Bacon- Shakespeare question, and, what
is more, a genuine and undoubted contemporary
proof/' What, then, is that proof ? It is found
in a line addressed by Marston to Hall :

What, not mediocria firma from thy spite ?

(Sat. IV, 77)

That is to say : " What, did not even mediocria
firma escape thy spite ? " — or we might translate :
' What, was not even mediocria safe (firma) from
thy spite ? "

" Mediocria firma ," therefore, stands for a writer,
and one who had been attacked by Hall. And
who was that writer ? Of this there can, surely,
be no doubt. :< Mediocria firma " was Bacon's
motto, and we find it engraved over the well-known
portrait of Franciscus Baconus Baro de Verulam,
which appears at the commencement of his Sylva
Sylvarum. Moreover, it is a motto which has
never been used except by the Earls of Verulam or
the Bacon family. " Mediocria firma," therefore,
stands for Bacon. But is " Mediocria firma "
identical with " Labeo " ?

Well, " Labeo," as used by Marston, stands
for the author of Venus and Adonis. Of that,
I think, there can be no doubt. And Hall's
" Labeo," the elusive author of a lascivious poem,

227

BACONIAN ESSAYS

who writes under a pseudonym and who is always
prepared to shift the responsibility upon somebody
else, seems eminently characteristic of Francis
Bacon. And it is Bacon, under the guise of
" Mediocria firma," the spiteful attacks upon whom
in Hall's Satires are deprecated by Marston. In
fine, it seems to be eminently probable, though
it cannot be said to be absolutely proved, that
" Labeo " and " Mediocria firma " are one and
the same.

The above is but a brief outline of the argument
put before his readers by the late Walter Begley,
and I have no space to elaborate it further in this
note. I should like, however, to add one final
word. If Bacon was the author of Venus and
Adonis, then he was also the author of Lucrece.
Well, for myself, I should not be at all surprised
to find that he was, in fact, the author of that long,
wearisome, tedious, and pedantic poem, where
the outraged matron, " apres avoir ete violee autant
qu'on pent Vetre" like Candide's Cunegonde,
and <;< pausing for means to mourn some newer
way," at last " calls to mind where hangs a piece
of skilful painting, made for Priam's Troy," the
contemplation of which leads to a prolonged train
of reflection concerning Ajax and Ulysses, Paris
and Helen, Hector and Troilus, Priam and Hecuba,
etc., etc., all of which is singularly out of place
in the mouth of Tarquin's unhappy victim. Nor
would I, in this connection, omit to refer to that
long and curious and unwanted passage concerning
heraldry which we find in an earlier part of the
poem (lines 54-72), and upon which Mr. George

228

FINAL NOTE

Wyndham remarks that : " Whenever Shakespeare
in an age of technical conceit indulges in one
ostentatiously, it will always be found that his
apparent obscurity arises from our not crediting
him with a technical knowledge which he un
doubtedly possessed, be it of heraldry, of law, or
philosophic disputation."

Here, in conclusion, I would advert to a passage
in this stilted poem which is curiously illustrative
of ' Shakespeare's knowledge of a not generally
known custom among the ancient Romans." When
Tarquin has forced an entry into the chamber
of Lucrece, we read : " Night wandering weasels
shriek to see him there," — a line which for a long
time puzzled all the commentators. For what
could weasels be doing in Collatine's house or in
Lucrece 's chamber ? At last, however, some
scholar directed attention to the note on Juvenal's
Satire XV, 7, in Mayor's edition, where we learn
that some animal of the weasel tribe was kept
by the Romans in their houses for some purpose
or another ; and referring to Facciolati's Dictionary,
we read : " Mustela, yaX^, animal quadrupes parvum
sed oblongum, flavi coloris, muribus, columbis,
gallinis infestum. Duo autem sunt genera :
alterum, domesticum quod in domibus nostris oberrat,
et catulos suos, ut auctor est Cicero, quotidie
transfert, mutatque sedem, serpentes persequitur,"
etc.

The Romans then, it seems, had no knowledge
of the domestic cat, and had domesticated an
animal of the weasel tribe which they kept in the
house to kill mice or it might be snakes, and for

'229

BACONIAN ESSAYS

other purposes. Now, this is just the sort of
out-of-the-way and recondite information which
Bacon would have delighted in. But does any
sane and reasonable man suppose that Will Shak-
spere of Stratford had ever heard of the " night-
wandering weasel " in an ancient Roman house ?
The Baconian authorship of Venus and Adonis
and Lucrece, and, I would add, the Sonnets,
may be rejected as " not proven," but the idea
that these works were written by the player who
came to London as a " Stratford rustic " in 1587,
is surely one of the most foolish delusions that
have ever obsessed and deceived the credulous
mind of man. O miser as hominum mentes, O
pectora cceca !

THE END.

Cahill 6* Co., Ltd., London, Dublin and Drogheda.

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UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY

PR Smithson, Edward Walter
Baconian essays

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