character, is also an element of style, only to be discovered now in the literary works of each.

The simple, manly character of Shakspere prevented him ever writing "Panegyrics," "Elegies," "Dedications," of the fulsome type in which Bacon constantly indulged. He never mentions Elizabeth openly, except in Cranmer's speech in Henry VIII. and in the Merry Wives of Windsor. He never alludes to James except in Macbeth. The simple dedication of his two poems to Southampton by Shakspere may be compared to Bacon's dedication of his Advancement · of Learning to James; and the thought must be impressed upon every reader that the same mind could not have used such differing forms.

Even in the treatment of the third person they are very different. The progress of their development also is different, Shakspere's style begins profuse and ends terse; Bacon. begins terse and somewhat bald, and ends with greater freedom, variety, and richness.

No author more often repeats similar phrases and ideas, sometimes identical, than Bacon, because he was a scientist; while the recurrences of Shakspere are few, and are modified by the mood and the circumstance, as becomes a poet and

a seer.

Shakspere writes as if he forgets everything he had written before. Bacon's good things are always cropping up again, in new combinations and connections, as if Bacon the writer never forgets Bacon the author.

One resemblance the Baconians do not notice, though it is a likeness with a difference. They both borrow largely, and they do not acknowledge it. Shakspere, however, borrows to illustrate his subject, and under conditions in which he could not acknowledge his debts. Bacon borrows, but it is to increase his own glory, and in circumstances under which he could have very well acknowledged his authorities. In his Anatomy of Melancholy, Robert Burton does so, and says, "I have wronged no man; I have

given every man his own; " and where it would be inartistic to mention the authors' names in the text, he puts them in a series of side-notes, most impressive to every reader. This book has been also said to be Bacon's by some of the Baconians; but this peculiar literary honesty of Burton's is quite sufficient to disprove any such claim. We find Bacon borrowing his Essays, not only from classic sources,1 but wholesale from Montaigne, and a small volume of Essays by J. S., published in 1596, altogether unacknowledged. We find his New Atlantis not only suggested in idea from Plato, but in plan from Sir Thomas More's Utopia, and in title and circumstance borrowed from Burton himself. The Anatomy of Melancholy, published in 1621 and signed by Burton, contained this passage: "I will yet, to satisfy myself, make a Utopia of mine own, a New Atlantis, a poetical commonwealth of mine own, in which I will freely domineer, build cities, make laws and statues as I list myself;" and then goes on to sketch his ideas, which marvellously resemble Bacon's New Atlantis, appearing in 1627.

Christian Paradoxes he never claimed, so that it is no discredit to him that the Rev. Alexander Grosart should have found they were the work of Herbert Palmer, B.D. They were published anonymously on the 24th July 1645, in a pirated edition, spoken of in the author's works; and the very next day, 25th July 1645, they were published in full, as Part II. of the Memorials of Godliness and Christianity, by Herbert Palmer, B.D., Master of Queen's Coll., Cambridge. They were printed as Bacon's first in 1648, after the death of Palmer. This is only here introduced because much of the reasoning on his religious feeling was based on this little work.

But Bacon did most essentially claim the whole and sole glory of his "great work." Yet his great namesake, Roger Bacon, who died in 1292, had also written an Opus Majus,

1 See Appendix, note 12.

Opus Minus, and Opus Tertium; had also fought against the adoration of Aristotle, the power of authority and appearances, the neglect of experiment. Some of his ideas wonderfully suggest the Novum Organum; for instance, "Appearances alone rule men, and they care not what they know, SO they are thought to know by a senseless multitude. There are four principal stumbling-blocks in the way of arriving at knowledge-authority, habit, appearances as they present themselves to the vulgar eye, and concealment of ignorance combined with the ostentation of knowledge. We must prefer reason to custom. Though the whole world be possessed by these causes of error, let us freely hear opinions contrary to established usage" (Opus Majus, Roger Bacon). Not only great ideas, but many rich phrases are borrowed from various authors, such as Heywood, Baudwin, Greene, Erasmus, Lyly, and even Shakspere himself, without any acknowledgment. I am not touching this as a moral question, but as a question of style common to Shakspere and Bacon in a certain degree. But the process and result of the amalgamation differs in each case entirely. What Shakspere borrows is always the inferior part of what he creates; with Bacon it is not always so. Shakspere's finished work is a chemical combination; Bacon's a physical mixture. Hence, through the seer's inspiration, Shakspere is often far ahead of the commonplace "advancement of the sciences" in Bacon's schemes, and sometimes far behind. In the observational, experimental sciences, Bacon is at his best. He attends to each point, however vulgar; he expresses each step with an exactitude at that time unknown; and he tells whether each experiment had been performed by him alone, or in concert with some other person (not named), or whether he had only taken them on hearsay. It is in a point of science then that we must look for the crucial test for the distinction of the two writers-a point of science, however, that has another aspect in a philosophic and social relation.

CHAPTER III.

SPECIAL ILLUSTRATION.

THERE is only one manufacture, treated both by Bacon and Shakspere, that gives an opportunity of revealing their scientific and psychologic methods of treatment. This I have worked out exhaustively, as I believe the distinction is critically valuable as well as original.

The relation each holds to wine, spirits, and beer is peculiar. Bacon considers no experiment too vulgar to be regarded. Trade facts and habits had been collected and criticised by his thoughtful mind. He notices wine more than beer; cyder with much interest; perry and mead a little; spirits, in any separate modern form, not at all. He gives advice as to the process of wine-making-methods of grafting vines, of training and manuring them, of ripening and preserving grapes; of the must, clarification, maturation, and methods of treatment, such as burying, heating, cooling. He tests the relative weights of wine and water. He treats of barley as seed, as growing corn, drying corn, as malt, as mash, as beer, and of other forms of grain that might be used as malt. He writes of hops, of finings, of casking, of bottling, of preserving, of doctoring. He gives valuable historical information as to the taxes on ale-houses, and the monopoly of sweet wines; legal information regarding felony, pardonable when a man is mad, but not when he is drunk. He writes the natural history of drunkenness and its effects. He gives some preventives against inebriety-i.e., by burning wine, taking sugar with it-taking

large draughts rather than small ones-and recommends oil or milk as an antidote to its after-effects.

The moral question never touches him; not even in his Colours of Good and Evil does he consider drink in relation to character. The psychological effect is treated only physiologically. Man, to him, is but a means of experimenting upon the various effects of spirit in wine.

We do not hear of Bacon mingling with the "people," or indulging in their "small ales," though he uses beer chiefly with medicine. Being a gentleman, and moving only among gentlemen, he chiefly affected wine, probably of expensive sorts, as he was a connoisseur.

Shakspere, in his non-dramatic poems-i.e., Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, Passionate Pilgrim, Sonnets, &c., never mentions wine or strong drink, as if it did not play so large a part in his life as the Baconians think. But it is different when we turn from the poems that shadow forth his own thoughts, to those that represent the thoughts of others. He knows that stimulants form an important element, not only of action, but also of character. The author of Shakspere was always ready to suggest what knowledge he had gleaned on every subject. Had he been Bacon, he could not have avoided some allusions to his knowledge and experiments on this point. Among the many trades and professions, the critics have "proved" that Shakspere "must have practised," no one suggested his being a brewer, distiller, wine-maker, maltster, or lecturer on the art of manufacturing liquors, as one might well have said of Bacon. Indeed, Mrs. Pott gives as one reason that he could not have written the Plays, that he did not allude to a brewing, &c. Now, we see that this test acts quite on the other side. Mr. Donnelly now says that Shakspere was a brewer, but he gives no proof of this. I am not going to contest this affirmation now, only this is just the profession in which he would require most help from Bacon. Shakspere, in his plays, at least