between the date of his return from Paris, in 1579, and the publication of his ten brief essays in January, 1598. What was that most fecund, prolific, laborious writer doing during these nearly twenty years? He was brimful of energy, industry, genius, mirth and humor: how did he expend it? What was that painful course of study and meditation which he underwent daily, as he told his uncle Burleigh? Read what Hepworth Dixon says of him at the age of twenty-four: How he appears in outward grace and aspect among these courtly and martial contemporaries, the miniature by Hilyard helps us to conceive. Slight in build, rosy and round in flesh, dight in sumptuous suit; the head well set, erect, and framed in a thick, starched fence of frill; a bloom of study and of travel on the fat, girlish face, which looks far younger than his years; the hat and feather tossed aside from the broad, white brow, over which crisps and curls a mane of dark, soft hair; an English nose-firm, open, straight; mouth delicate and small-a lady's or a jester's mouth—a thousand pranks and humors, quibbles, whims and laughters lurking in its twinkling, tremulous lines. Such is Francis Bacon at the age of twenty-four.' Is this the description of a dry-as-dust philosopher? Is it not rather the picture of the youthful scholar, the gentleman, the wit, the poet, "fresh from academic studies," who wrote The Two Gentlemen of Verona and Love's Labor Lost? In brief, the Shakespeare Plays are the fruits of Bacon's youth; for it is in youth he tells us that the imagination streams with divine felicity into the mind; while his philosophical works are the product of middle life. It is not until 1603, when Bacon was fortytwo years of age, that he published the first of his scientific works, entitled Valerius Terminus; or, the Interpretation of Nature: with the Annotations of Hermes Stella. And who, we ask passingly, was "Hermes Stella"? Was Bacon, with his usual secretiveness, seeking another weed-another Shakspere? Mrs. Pott says: There is something so mysterious about this strange title, and in the obscurity of the text itself as well as in the meaning of the astronomical and astrological symbols written on the blank outside of the volume, that Mr. Ellis and Mr. Spedding comment upon them, but can throw no real light upon them. XX. ANOTHER MYSTERY. W. A. A. Watts, in a paper read before the Bacon Society of London while this work is going through the press,' calls attention to the striking fact that Ben Jonson, besides stating that Bacon 1 Dixon's Personal History of Lord Bacon, p. 25. Journal of the Baconian Society, Aug., 1887, p. 130. had "filled all numbers' and was "the mark and acme of our language," in a poem entitled "Underwoods," addressed to Bacon on his birthday, says: In the midst, Thou stand'st as though a mystery thou didst. This is certainly extraordinary. What was the mystery? Was it in connection with those "numbers" which excelled anything in Greek or Roman dramatic literature, and which were "the mark and acme of our language"? If not, what did Ben mean? XXI. COKE'S INSULTS. We find all through that period of Bacon's life, between 1597 and his accession to the place of Lord Chancellor, that he was the subject of a great many slanders. But while he alludes to the slanders, he is careful not to tell us what they were. Did they refer to the Shakespeare Plays? Did they charge that he paid his debts with money taken in at the door of the play-house? For we may be sure that among the actors there were whisperings which it would be difficult to keep from spreading abroad; and Thus comes it that my name receives a brand, And almost thus my nature is subdued To what it works in, like the dyer's hand. But there has come down to us a letter of Bacon which gives us some account of the insults he was subjected to. In it Bacon complains, in 1601, to his cousin, Lord Secretary Cecil, that his arch-enemy, Mr. Attorney-General Coke, had publicly insulted him in the Exchequer. He tells that he moved for the reseizure of the lands of one George Moore, a relapsed recusant, fugitive and traitor He says: Mr. Attorney kindled at it and said: Mr. Bacon, if you have any tooth against me pluck it out, for it will do you more hurt than all the teeth in your head will do you good." I answered coldly, in these very words: "Mr. Attorney, I respect you; I fear you not; and the less you speak of your own greatness the more will I think of it." He replied: "I think scorn to stand upon terms of greatness toward you, who are less than little; less than the least;” and other such strange light terms he gave me, with such insulting which cannot be expressed. Herewith I stirred, yet I said no more but this: "Mr. Attorney, do not depress me so far; for I have been your better, and may be again, when it please the Queen." With this he spake, neither I nor himself could tell what, as if he had been born Attorney-General; and in the end bade me not meddle with the Queen's business, but mine own. . . . Then he said it were good to clap a capias utlegatum upon my back! To which I only said he could not, and that he was at fault; for he hunted upon an old scent. He gave me a number of disgraceful words besides, which I answered with silence.' And Bacon writes Cecil, evidently with intent to have him silence Coke. I will ask the reader to remember this letter when we come to the Cipher Narrative. It shows, it seems to me, that Cecil knew of something to Bacon's discredit, and that Coke, Cecil's follower, had heard of it and blurted it out in his rage in open court, and threatened Bacon with arrest; and Bacon writes to his cousin for protection against Coke's tongue. Spedding says the threat of the capias utlegatum may possibly have referred to a debt that Bacon owed in 1598; but what right would Coke have to arrest Bacon for a debt due to a third party, and which must have been paid three years before? And why should Bacon say "he was at fault." If Coke referred to the debt he was not "at fault," for Bacon certainly had owed it. XXII. CONCLUSION. In conclusion I would say that I have in the foregoing pages shown that, if we treat the real author of the Plays, and Francis Bacon, as two men, they belonged to the same station in society, to the same profession - the law; to the same political party and to the same faction in the state; that they held the same religious views, the same philosophical tenets and the same purposes in life. That each was a poet and a philosopher, a writer of dramatic compositions, and a play-goer. That Bacon had the genius, the opportunity, the time and the necessity to write the Plays, and ample reasons to conceal his authorship. I proceed now to another branch of my argument. I shall attempt to show that these two men, if we may still call them such, pursued the same studies, read the same books, possessed the same tastes, enjoyed the same opinions, used the same expressions, employed the same unusual words, cited the same quotations and fell into the same errors. If all this does not bring the brain of the poet under the hat of the philosopher, what will you have? 'Spedding, Life and Works, vol. iii, p. 2. London: Longmans. WHO HO does not remember that curious word used by Hamlet, to describe the coldness of the air, upon the platform where he awaits the Ghost: It is very cold. It is a nipping and an eager air.1 We turn to Bacon, and we find this very word used in the same sense: Whereby the cold becomes more eager.' There is another strange word used by Shakespeare: Light thickens, And the crow makes wing to the rocky wood.3 We turn again to Bacon, and we find the origin of this singular expression: For the over-moisture of the brain doth thicken the spirits visual.1 In the same connection we have in Bacon this expression: The cause of dimness of sight is the expense of spirits. We turn to Shakespeare's sonnets, and we find precisely the same arrangement of words: Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame. 1 Hamlet, i, 4. Natural History, § 688. Macbeth, iii, 2. 5 Ibid. |