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of assize; was knighted in 1608, made a King's Serjeant in 1612, elected to Parliament in 1620, and was on the point of being raised to the King's Bench, when he died in 1626. According to Anthony Wood, he "was held in esteem by the noted scholars of the time, as W. Cambden, Sir Jo. Harrington the poet, Ben Jonson, facete Hoskins," and others; and at the date of this letter, which by the address' must have been written some time in March, 1603, it is evident that he was so intimate with Francis Bacon that it was presumed he would understand what was meant when he was desired "to be good to concealed poets"! 1

Of this same metaphysical school was the learned poet, John Donne, a Cambridge man, who had been admitted to Lincoln's Inn, and accompanied the Earl of Essex on his expedition to Cadiz in 1596, and against the Islands in 1597, and, on his return to England, became the chief secretary of Lord Chancellor Egerton (Ellesmere), and an inmate of his family; whence it is hardly possible he should not have been well acquainted with Francis Bacon. He afterwards took orders and became Preacher at Lincoln's Inn, and subsequently Dean of St. Paul's; but there seems to be no particular mention of his acquaintance with Bacon, beyond the statement of Nichols, that on the 24th of March 161718, the Lord Chancellor Bacon (whom Ellesmere had recommended for his successor), the Earl of Southampton, Secretary Winwood, and others, attended St. Paul's to hear a sermon from Dr. Donne.

It is pretty certain, however, that, in the list of these associates, there were some other persons, Essex and Southampton among them, who would have understood this letter equally well. In a familiar letter addressed to Essex, in January 1595, while the question of the Solicitorship was still pending, Bacon throws in a similar allusion, thus: Desiring your good Lordship nevertheless not to con

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1 Nichols' Prog. K. James I., I. 52; II. 198 n. (1), London, 1828; Wood's Athen. Oxon., II. 400; Chalmers' Eng. Poets, V. 75.

ceive out of this my diligence in soliciting this matter that I am either much in appetite or much in hope. For as for appetite, the waters of Parnassus are not like the waters of the Spaw, that give a stomach; but rather they quench appetite and desires."1 What had Francis Bacon to do with the waters of Parnassus! or was it the writer of these very letters that put into the mouth of Rosalind in the play this expression also? "One inch of delay more is a Southsea of discovery. I pr'ythee, tell me, who is it? quickly, and speak apace: I would thou could'st stammer, that thou might'st pour this concealed man out of thy mouth, as wine comes out of a narrow-necked bottle; either too much at once, or none at all."" In general, the use of the same word, in a single instance, may be accidental, or common, and proves nothing; but the peculiar use of a particular author may be such as to mark his individuality, as again in these lines:

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Will in concealment wrap me up awhile."
Lear, Act IV. Sc. 3.

It has already been observed that there is a striking general resemblance between the style and manner of the Dedication and Preface to the Folio and that of Bacon and the plays themselves. The dedicatory epistles to Southampton, prefixed to the "Venus and Adonis" and the "Rape of Lucrece," being very brief, not much can be founded on any critical comparison of the styles; but there is here, again, a striking similitude to the manner of Bacon. The prop is a frequent source of metaphor in the plays, and it is a favorite word and figure, as also the word pillar, in the writings of Bacon. In one of his earlier works, he says: "I remember in a chamber in Cambridge, that was something ruinous, a pillar of iron was erected for a prop; " and this same pillar and prop seem to have

1 Letters and Life, by Spedding, I. 345.

2 As You Like It, Act III. Sc. 2.

8 Works (Mont.), XV. 232.

lived in his imagination. It appears in the epistle dedicatory of the "Venus and Adonis," thus: "I know not how the world will censure me for choosing so strong a prop to support so weak a burthen." In a letter to the King, we find this expression: "For in that other poor prop of my estate, which is the farming of the petty writs;" so, in Shakespeare, we have like expressions:

"Sweet Duke of York, our prop to lean upon."-3 Henry VI.

"Two props of virtue for a Christian." - Richard III., Act II. Sc. 7.

And again,

"Gob. Marry, God forbid! the boy was the very staff of my age, my

very prop.

Laun. [Aside.] Do I look like a cudgel, or a hovel-post, a staff, or a prop?" · Merchant of Venice, Act II. Sc. 4.

And again,

"You take my house when you do take the prop

That doth sustain my house."— Ibid., Act IV. Sc. 1.

And speaking of those "illustrative examples" and that "true art," in which there was to be some departure from "the customary fashion," Bacon remarks in the Scaling Ladder, that "the industry and happiness of man" are not to be "indissolubly bound, as it were, to a single pillar"; and in his "Observations on a Libel," he uses the expression, "their ancient pillar of lying wonders being decayed." And this same pillar is a frequent figure in Shakespeare, as thus:

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By itself alone, this use of a single word, or figure, might very well be deemed a trivial coincidence, or the mere result of common use; but when it is found that this is a

favorite metaphor in both, and only one of innumerable similitudes of like or even much stronger kind in these writings, it may come to have some significance. In the Dedication to the "Rape of Lucrece," the writer says: "What I have done is yours, what I have to do is yours; being part in all I have devoted yours; a declaration which is at least consistent enough with the plan of the supposed arrangement.

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CHAPTER III.

FURTHER PROOFS.

"Now for the Athenian question; you discourse well, Quid igitur agendum est ? I will shoot my fool's bolt, since you will have it so."-BACON TO ESSEX (1598).

"Orl. You are the better at proverbs, by how much-A fool's bolt is soon shot."— Henry V., Act III. Sc. 7, (1599).

§ 1. PARALLEL WORKS.

FRANCIS BACON was engaged, during the same period and afterwards, in writing and publishing works in prose on kindred and parallel subjects, as for instance, in particular, his Masques, the Essays, the Fable of Cupid, the Wisdom of the Ancients, the New Atlantis, the Happy Memory, the Discourse in Praise of the Queen, the Characters of Julius and Augustus Cæsar, the Histories of Henry VII. and Henry VIII., the Advancement of Learning, his Speeches, and the Great Instauration of Science and Philosophy; indeed, the whole of his works may come into the comparison, not excepting the Novum Organum itself. He was sounding all the depths and hidden mysteries of Nature, threading the labyrinth of all philosophy, and scaling with ladders the heights of the empyrean. A critical comparison of these writings with the plays and poems in question, it is firmly believed, will be sufficient to satisfy any reasonable mind, at all competent to judge of such a matter, not merely of that general resemblance which has been long ago frequently observed, and always attributed to the common usage and style of that age, but of such close similitudes in the thought, style, and diction as to leave no room for doubt of the absolute identity of the

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