also writers, such as Cicero. He gives Viscount St. Albans as the illustrative man. The mere repetition of the phrase of "insolent Greece and haughty Rome" is a phrase used for mere rhetorical effect in both places; "filled up all numbers here has only to do with "eloquentia," as any careful student of the following may see.

Ben says, speaking of De Claris Oratoribus: "I have known many excellent men that would speak suddenly, to the admiration of their hearers, who, upon study and premeditation, have been forsaken by their own wits, and no way answered their fame; their eloquence was greater than their reading, and the things they uttered better than those they knew; their fortune deserved better of them than their care. For men of present spirits and of greater wits than study do please more in the things they invent than in those they bring. And I have heard some of them compelled to speak, out of necessity, that have so infinitely exceeded themselves, as it was better both for them and their auditory that they were so surprised, not prepared. Nor was it safe then to cross them, for their adversary, their anger, made them more eloquent. Yet these men I could not but love and admire, that they returned to their studies. They left not diligence (as many do) when their rashness prospered; for diligence is a great aid, even to an indifferent wit; when we are not contented with the examples of our own age, but would know the face of the former. Indeed, the more we confer with, the more we profit, if the persons be chosen.

"Dominus Verulamius.—One, though he be excellent and the chief, is not to be imitated alone: for no imitator ever grew up to his author; likeness is always on this side truth. Yet there happened in my time one noble speaker, who was full of gravity in his speaking. His language (when he could spare or pass by a jest) was nobly censorious. No man ever spake more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in

what he uttered. No member of his speech but consisted of his own graces. His hearers could not cough or look aside from him without loss. He commanded where he spoke, and had his judges angry and pleased at his devotion. No man had their affections more in his power. The fear of every man that heard him was lest he should make an end.

"Scriptorum Catalogus.-Cicero is said to be the only wit that the people of Rome had, equalled to their empire. We have had many. Lord Egerton, the Chancellor, a grave and great orator, and best when he was provoked. But his learned and able (though unfortunate) successor 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 help study. Now things daily fall, wits grow downward and eloquence grows backwards, so that he may be named, and stand as the mark and άxuý of our language.

.

"De Augmentis Scientiarum, Julius Cæsar. Lord St. Alban: I have ever observed it to have been the office of a wise patriot among the greatest affairs of state to take care of the commonwealth of learning. For schools they are the seminaries of state, and nothing is worthier the study of a statesman than that part of the republic which we call the advancement of letters. Witness the care of Julius Cæsar, who, in the heat of the civil war, writ his books of analogy, and dedicated them to Tully. This made the late Lord St. Alban entitle his work Novum Organum, which, though by the most of superficial 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 book

'Qui longum noto scriptori proroget ævum.'

1 Horat. de Art. Poetica.

Edmund Bolton's Hypercritica, reprinted in Hazlewood's Essays upon English Poets, 1815. Printed by Hall, 1722.

"Prime gardens for gathering English according to the true Gage or Standard of the tongue about 15 or 16 years ago." . . . "Most of all, there are Sir Francis Bacon's writings, which have the freshest and most savory form and aptest utterances, that (as I suppose) our tongue can hear. These, next to his Majesties' own most Royal Style, are the principal prose writers, whom out of my present memory, I dare commend for the best garden-plots out of which to gather English Language.

"In verse there are Ed. Spenser's Hymns. I cannot advise the allowance of other his poems, as for practick English, no more than I can do Jeff Chaucer, Lydgate, Pierce Ploughman, or Laureat Skelton."

Then he goes on to treat poets of the modern style, see ante, under date 1610.

If, therefore, his contemporaries did not even claim him to be a poet on the strength of the verses he acknowledged, none need claim him as the poet of poems he never owned.

Reading has only increased my conviction, not only that Bacon did not write the plays, but that he could not, and his editor Spedding thought the same.

CHAPTER VI.

THE HISTORY OF THE HERESY.

I HAVE presupposed hitherto that those who read this book must have understood the various doctrines of the heresy, and the history thereof. In case, however, that some may be ignorant of the bases of the various assaults, I shall go through a few of the chief statements. Since they have gained form various people have claimed priority.

Farmer, in 1789, was the first real anti-Shaksperean; and Horace Walpole's Historic Doubts have been ranked in the list. But this present contest was really first broached in The Romance of Yachting, a novel written in 1848 by Hart, New York.

In August 7, 1852, in Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, Mr. Jamieson wrote the anonymous article, "Who wrote Shakespeare?" and suggested that he "kept a poet."1

Miss Delia Bacon's article on the Philosophy of Shakespeare's Plays Unfolded appeared in Putnam's Magazine for January 1856, and was afterwards reprinted. She held that the poet Shakspere kept was "Bacon," and that he had used these plays to unfold his new philosophy. She

1 "Who wrote Shakespeare?"—Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, Saturday, August 7, 1852. "Thus asks Mrs. Kitty in High Life Below Stairs; to which his Grace, my lord Duke, gravely replies, 'Ben Jonson.' 'Oh, no,' quoth my Lady Bab; 'Shakespeare was written by one Mr. Finis, for I saw his name at the end of the book."" Though the author of this article laughs at these errors, he goes hastily through the subject, suggesting that Shakspere kept a poet; that when the poet died, the plays ceased to appear; but Shakspere, as manager, retired rich.

was nevertheless so inconsistent as to dwell over every souvenir of Shakspere; to haunt the places where he had lived; to spend even a night in Stratford Church by his tomb; and to lose her reason in her perplexity. But she suggested the idea in America, where many subsequent writers took it up. Meanwhile in England Mr. William Henry Smith was working at it, and in 1857 he published his book Bacon and Shakespeare, an Inquiry touching Players, Playhouses, and Playwriters in the days of Elizabeth. This was said to have convinced Lord Palmerston.

Mr. William D. O'Connor, in a novel entitled Harrington, a Story of True Love, published in Boston, U.S., gave his strong support to Miss Delia Bacon's views, 1860.

The Hon. Nathaniel Holmes, called by Mr. Wyman, the bibliographer, "the apostle of Baconianism," in 1866 wrote a substantial book to prove that Bacon wrote the plays, and that he was known to be the author by some of his contemporaries. His Authorship of Shakespeare, written in two volumes, has reached the third edition. This is really the text-book of the Baconians proper, and gives all their strong "points." It sifts out a chronological order of production of the plays, and of the several writings of Bacon, and shows there can be no possibility of borrowing; and that the parallel or identical passages are incontestable proofs of Bacon's authorship, especially those in science and philosophy.

It represents much good work with a mistaken idea. It is much the best book on that side, and is certainly interesting to read as a psychological development.

- The Australians next became interested in the question; and Dr. William Thompson of Melbourne in 1878 wrote a pamphlet entitled The Political Purpose of the Renascence Drama: The Key of the Argument; another in 1880, Our Renascence Drama, or History made Visible; in 1881 he added a continuation, William Shakespeare in Romance and Reality; in the same year Bacon and Shakespeare; and