Bacon, no one in the British Museum knows anything about it. Whether the Richard II. and III. were Shakspere's rendering of these histories, we have no means to prove. Other men wrote of these histories after William Baudwin in his Mirror for Magistrates.1 Yet this chance scribble of a copying-clerk is one of the strongest pillars of the Baconian edifice! Another is like to it.

Bacon writes a letter to the poet Sir John Davies,2 asking him to help his advancement under King James, and be good to "concealed poets;" but one has only to turn to his remarks on poesy to understand what he means by that. We can see that he separates the matter from the form, that he sets parabolical poetry above dramatic, and calls it an artifice for concealment, independent of the conditions of verse or prose.

"The measure of words has produced a vast body of art -namely, Poesy, considered with reference not to the matter of it, but to the style and form of it, that is to say, metre and verse. But for Poesy, whether we speak of Inventions or metre, it is like a luxuriant plant that comes out of the lust of the earth, without any formal seed. Wherefore, it spreads everywhere and is scattered far and wide, so that it would be vain to take thought about the defects of it. With this, therefore, we need not trouble ourselves." -De Augm. Sci. lib. vi.

(Poesy-feigned History or Fables.) De Augmentis, Book ii. "It is concerned with individuals; it commonly exceeds the measure of nature, joining at pleasure things which in nature would never have come together, and introducing things which in nature would never have come together, and introducing things which in nature would never have come to pass. This is the work of Imagination."

Chap. xiii.: "Under the name of Poesy, I treat only of feigned History. . . . Narrative poetry is a mere imita

1 See Appendix, Note 17.

2 See Appendix, Note 15.

tion of History. . Dramatic poetry is History made visible; for it represents actions as if they were present, whereas History represents them as past." "A sound argument may be drawn from Poesy to show that there is agreeable to the spirit of man a more ample greatness, a more perfect order, and a more beautiful variety than it can anywhere find in nature. Dramatic poetry, which has the Theatre for its world, would be of excellent use if well directed. For the stage is capable of no small influence both of discipline and corruption. Now of corruptions of this kind we have enough; but the discipline has in our times been plainly neglected. And though in modern states play-acting is esteemed but as a toy, except when it is too satirical and biting; yet among the ancients it was used as a means of educating men's minds to virtue. Nay, it has been regarded by learned men and great philosophers as a kind of musician's bow by which men's minds may be played upon. And certainly, it is most true, and one of the great secrets of nature, that the minds of men are more open to impressions and affections when many are gathered together than when they are alone. True history may be written in verse, and feigned history in prose. It is of double use, and serves for contrary purposes, for it serves for an enfoldment; and it likewise serves for illustration. In the latter case the object is a certain method of teaching; in the former, an artifice for concealment. . . . The numbers of Pythagoras, the enigmas of the Sphinx, the fables of Æsop, the apophthegms of ancient sages were parabolical poesy . . . a mystery involved in many of them."

The New Atlantis and the Masques would quite fit these definitions. His being "wholly exercised in inventions" is also evidently explained by the experiments and inventions he made. "I have taken all knowledge to be my province; and if I could purge it of two sorts of rovers, whereof the one with disputations, confutations, and verbosities, the

other with blind experiments and auricular traditions and impostures, hath committed so many spoils; I hope I should bring in industrious observations, grounded conclusions, and profitable inventions and discoveries; the best state of that province. This, whether it be curiosity, or vainglory, or nature, or, if one take it favourably, philanthropia, is so fixed in my mind that it cannot be removed." -Letter to Burghley, 1592. He often uses the word in this sense, as well as his previous one-a poetic conception of a fictitious tale, such as would suggest our modern novel. On the other hand, he distinctly states to the Earl of Essex: "I profess not to be a poet; but I prepared a sonnet directly tending to draw on Her Majesty's reconcilement to my Lord, which I remember I also showed to a great person, one of my Lord's nearest friends, who commended it. This, though it be, as I said, but a toy, yet it showed plainly in what spirit I proceeded." We may rest assured that, if Bacon did not profess to be a poet, he was not one. The "Lines to a Retired Courtier" are not claimed by Bacon, but given to him by Baconians. I should much rather think them by Raleigh.

The few lines in the "Masque of an Indian Prince,” and the few lines published in Sir Walter Raleigh's poems as by Bacon, are very probably his.

“The man of life upright, whose guiltless heart is free
From all dishonest deeds and thoughts of vanity.
That man whose silent days in harmless joys are spent,
Whom hopes cannot delude nor fortune discontent,

That man needs neither tower nor armour for defence."

There are few prose writers who have not occasionally tried verse.

Of the translations of certain Psalms into English verse by Bacon, 1624, Spedding says: "These were the only verses certainly of Bacon's making that have come to us, and probably, with one or two slight exceptions, the only verses he ever wrote.'

That a man capable in 1623 of altering and editing the blank verse Plays, should have become so disorganised as to be able to print, even if he had written, the commonplace rhymed versifications of the Psalms in 1624, could be accounted for only by some unknown disease.

We may therefore rest assured that William Shakspere claimed his works during his life, though he had so bestowed the copyrights as not to have them to leave in his will.

We may exonerate Bacon not only from claiming the Plays in life or in death, but from suggesting in his works that he might have written them.

But not only were the Poems and Plays printed as Shakspere's at the outset, both in the early editions and the standard editions of 1623 and 1632, but they continued to be so by the old stationers and by the modern editors without exception or scepticism. We must not forget the old proverb, "Possession is nine points of the law." Our arguments, then, do not require to be one quarter as strong as those of the other side to overwhelm them. But we have an opinion, shared by many, that they are stronger.

CHAPTER V.

EXTERNAL EVIDENCE.

THE external evidence of other people's writings, however, is the most convincing proof.

1592. The earliest printed notice which alludes to Shakspere is in Greene's Groat's-worth of Wit, where he, in an oft-quoted passage, evidently aims at Shakspere's growing fame as an actor, and his entrance on a dramatic career as the critic and adapter of other men's dramas, and calls him "an absolute Johannes Factotum" and "the only Shakescene in a country." Besides quoting from one of Shakspere's plays, Greene suggests that he also assisted in stage-management, and points to the fact that he was dominant by that time, and that other witty writers were subject to his pleasures.

Greene's scorn of the actors, the "puppits," the "buckram gentlemen," seems embittered by the fact that one of them should be "able to bumbast out a blanke verse as well as the best of you." As a rival of Shakspere it is wonderful he had so little else to say against him; and yet it came very badly from him, who only just before, in Greene's Quip for an Upstart Courtier, had translated wholesale, from verse into his prose, The Debate between Pride and Lowliness, by T. F., probably Francis Thynne, printed by Charlewood several years before Greene's pamphlet. "Young Juvenal, that biting satyrist,' and thou no less.

1 Nash.