writings; hence as it is proved that he wrote the sonnets, there is no argument left against his authorship of the plays, and no just or reasonable doubters.

Another striking contrast between these men is Shakespeare's thrift and Bacon's improvidence and debt. It is too lengthy a story to give details of Bacon's life-long pecuniary troubles. He was always borrowing. His mother and his brother Anthony were continually devising ways to pay his debts and keep his expenses within bounds. Those who care to get a glimpse into his disgraceful money transactions will find some account of them in Abbott's "Bacon and Essex." Macaulay says, "After his sentence was remitted the government allowed him a pension of £1,200 a year. Unhappily he was fond of display and unused to pay minute attention to domestic affairs. He was not easily persuaded to give up any of the magnificence to which he had been accustomed in the time of his power and prosperity. No pressure of distress could induce him to part with the woods of Gorhambury. 'I will not,' he said 'be stripped of my feathers.' He travelled with so splendid an equipage and so

large a retinue that Prince Charles, who once fell in with him on the road, exclaimed with surprise, 'Well! do what we can, this man scorns to go out in snuff.''

After reading this stricture of so fair a commentator, no one can believe him the author of

"Pol.-Neither a borrower, nor a lender be:

For loan oft loses both itself and friend;

And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry."

Bacon did not believe in that interpretation of good husbandry; his life was full of schemes to obtain money as best he could, and to escape the demands of creditors. To further illustrate the comparison between his propensities and the quotation from Shakespeare, just given! In 1624, after his pardon, Bacon had the effrontery to write to Buckingham, "Neither has there been anything done for me that I might die out of ignominy, or live out of want. . . . I firmly hope your grace will deal with his majesty, that as I have tasted of his mercy, I may taste of his bounty." A month later he petitioned the king to the same effect, imploring, for his urgent necessities, three years' advance of his pension, which the king gener

ously granted. King James died in 1625, so that it must have been within a year after this piteous appeal for a practical loan, that Prince Charles met him flourishing in such state; possibly on the proceeds of the advance. Bacon died in 1626, one year later, £22,000 in debt.

After citing his behaviour toward Essex, it is not necessary to give anything further to show his entire lack of every sense of obligation; but that was a monster iniquity; to show the complete absence in his composition, of even a small spirit of thankfulness, his considering that in the remission of his fearful sentence and heavy fine, nothing had been done for him, is well supplemented by the fact, that after the king had granted the advance of money, Bacon wrote Buckingham that there were warrants on the treasury prior to his, and, "as the exchequer is thought to be somewhat barren," urged the duke to use his personal influence with the chancellor to obtain immediate payment, as the other warrants were for gifts, his was a bargain.

This is the man who is represented by some of his most active admirers, as so sensitive of

his reputation, that he concealed his identity as author of the works of Shakespeare.

It is doubtful if a parallel to Bacon can be found in such utter deficiency of those noble traits, in laudation of which, Shakespeare's utterances have become proverbs.

CHAPTER VII.

Court favourites as patrons of the stage-Shakespeare's industry and property in the plays-Bacon's manuscript-Bacon's experiment with the fowl-Bacon's whereabouts when the plays were collectedAdverse criticism upon Shakespeare-The classics-Bacon and the poem of Lucrece-The Promus.

WHILE Shakespeare's detractors stand

amazed that one of such obscure origin and supposed meagre opportunities, should be credited with the masterpieces of English literature, they do not seem conscious of anything singular or unlikely in their theory of Bacon's choice of him as their presumed author. If Shakespeare was an "illiterate man, a ne'erdo-well, and a lounger in tap-rooms," it is not complimentary to their idol's common sense that he should have selected a person of these negative qualifications to produce, for one so jealous of fame and reputation, works of a character that would have excited unbounded surprise and incredulity, especially among his associates and the several rival, and even hos