order of time, was made by Dr. William Thomson, of Melbourne, Australia, in his work, The Political Purpose of the Renascence Drama: The Key of the Argument, an 8vo pamphlet of 57 pages, published at Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide, in 1878, by George Robertson.

I have not been able to procure copies of any of Dr. Thomson's publications. I learn from Mr. Wyman's Bibliography that Dr. Thomson was a practicing physician at Melbourne, Australia. Mr. Wyman says:

He was evidently a fine scholar and an intense Baconian. He died during the past year (1884), at the age of sixty-three.

Mr. Wyman sends me the following extract from a private letter received by him from Melbourne:

The Baconian theory of Shakespeare's writings was an intense hobby with Dr. Thomson; and even the day before he died he sent for some books on the subject: the ruling passion strong in death. . . . His usefulness as a member of society was somewhat marred by his quarrelsome disposition. He was ever ready to put on the literary war-paint, and raised up numerous enemies thereby.

From my knowledge of this end of the nineteenth century I should interpret this last sentence to signify that Dr. Thomson was persecuted and hounded by the advocates of "the divine Williams," as the Frenchman called him; and that because he maintained his convictions, his intelligent convictions, and would not agree to think as the unreasoning multitude around him, he was regarded as a belligerent savage, ready at all times to don the warpaint. The man who in this world undertakes to think his own thoughts, and express them, will find the angles of ten thousand elbows grinding his ribs continually. The fool who has no opinions, and the coward who conceals what he has, are always in rapport with the streaming, shouting, happy-go-lucky multitude; but woe unto the strong man who does his own thinking, and will not be bullied into silence!

Mrs. Pott writes me, recently:

I have had a long and pleasant correspondence with Dr. Thomson, and I felt his death very much. He was a very clever man. His friends, (some of whom have been to see me), and his relations, claim for him that he was the originator of the germ theories attributed to Koch. He illustrated the fact that phthisis is infectious and communicable by germs in the air, and proved that it was unknown in Australia until introduced in a definite manner by consumptive people from England. He was a man to be remembered.

I regret that I cannot speak more fully concerning this able and resolute gentleman, who held up the torch of the new doctrine in the midst of an unbelieving generation, in the far-away antipodes.

In 1880 he published at Melbourne, Australia, a book entitled: Our Renascence Drama; or, History made Visible. Sands and McDougal. 8vo, pp. 359.

In 1881 he put forth a continuation of this work: William Shakespeare in Romance and Reality. By William Thomson. Melbourne: Sands and McDougall. 8vo, pp. 95.

In the same year he published at Melbourne a pamphlet of sixteen pages, entitled, Bacon and Shakespeare; also another pamphlet of thirty-nine pages, entitled, Bacon, not Shakespeare, on Vivisection. In 1882 he published another pamphlet of forty-six pages, entitled, The Political Allegories in the Renascence Drama of Francis Bacon. In 1883 he put forth a pamphlet of twenty-four pages, entitled, A Minute among the Amenities, in which he replies to certain pro-Shakspere critics in leading Australian periodicals; claiming that he was denied a hearing by the papers that had attacked him, and was forced to defend himself and his doctrines in a pamphlet. This was the last of his utterances.

IV. MRS. HENRY POTT.

In 1883 appeared one of the most important contributions yet made to the discussion of the Baconian question: The Promus of Formularies and Elegancies, (being Private Notes, circ. 1594, hitherto unpublished), by Francis Bacon. Illustrated and elucidated by passages from Shakespeare. By Mrs. Henry Pott. With Preface by E. A. Abbott, D.D., Head Master of the City of London School. 1883. London: Longmans, Green & Co. Svo, pp. 628.

Mr. Wyman says:

The MSS. known as the Promus form a part of the Harleian collection in the British Museum. . . . They consist of fifty sheets or folios, nearly all in the handwriting of Bacon, containing 1655 different entries or memoranda. The whole seems to have been kept by Bacon as a sort of commonplace-book, in which he entered at different times brief forms of expression, phrases, proverbs, verses from the Bible, and quotations from Seneca, Horace, Virgil, Erasmus, and many other writers. These are in various languages - English, French, Italian, etc.

Mrs. Pott's great work — and it is indeed a monument of industry and learning- has for its object to show that, while hundreds

of these entries have borne no fruit in the preparation of Bacon's acknowledged works, they reappear with wonderful distinctness in the Shakespeare Plays. With phenomenal patience Mrs. Pott has worked out thousands of these identities in her book. I have already made many citations from it. Some idea may be formed of the marvelous industry of this remarkable lady when I state that, to prove that we are indebted to Bacon for having enriched the English language, through the Plays, with those beautiful courtesies of speech, "Good morrow," "Good day," etc., she carefully examined six thousand works anterior to or contemporary with Bacon.

Mrs. Pott resides in London. She is nearing the fiftieth milestone of her life. She comes of the best blood of England and Scotland; of a long line of clergymen and lawyers. Judge Haliburton, of Nova Scotia, celebrated as the writer of the "Sam Slick' papers, was a cousin of her mother. Her uncle, James Haliburton, was the first Englishman to attempt to investigate the Pyramids of Egypt. He lived among the Arabs and mastered their language, as well as the hieroglyphics on the ancient monuments. The first collection of mummies in the British Museum was presented by him, and bears his name. It is claimed that Sir Gardiner Wilkinson appropriated his papers and labors without acknowledgment. Sir Walter Scott was a Haliburton. Mrs. Pott's father, John Peter Fearon, was a lawyer. "He came," says Mrs. Pott, in answer to my questions, " of a long line of Sussex clergy and country gentlemen. They seem, like the oaks, to have been indigenous to this soil." Among the acquaintances of Mrs. Pott's youth were the celebrated Stephensons and "dear old Professor Faraday." Mrs. Pott writes me a charming account of her early years, from which I take the liberty to quote a few sentences:

Things in general fell to me to do. To ride, to botanize and analyze with my father; and to take notes for him at the Royal Institution lectures, which we attended thrice a week during the season, from the time I was nine until I was nineteen. We had an immense deal of company to entertain and cater for, and I was dubbed "chief of the folly and decoration department;" and looking back, in these days of high schools and cram, I cannot think how I got my education certainly not in the ordinary way. We had an extremely clever and original governess, who had lived for sixteen years at Oxford in the family of the Dean of Christ Church. She came to us overflowing with university ideas, knowledge of books, etc.; and she impenetrated my imagination with a desire to know all sorts of things which were considered to be far beyond the reaches of small souls; so