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be sending to Mr. Matthew, unless it were precisely this Folio of 1623: nor does anything appear on record to indicate a later date than this for this very notable postscript. And considering that it was this same Mr. Tobie Matthew, who personated the "Squire" in the masque at Essex's house; that he was "one of the most eccentric characters of that age," an intimate literary friend of Bacon, and a correspondent of long standing, to whom he was in the habit of sending his books as they came out, making him, too, sometimes, his critical "inquisitor"1 beforehand; that, at this very time, the closest relations of friendship and correspondence subsisted between them, "being," says Bacon, not long after, in a letter to Cottington, as true a friend as any you or I have;"2 and that he was himself a scholar, and a son of the Archbishop of York, with whom also Bacon corresponded, and was particularly familiar with Bacon's writings, mind, and character; we shall be prepared not to be so greatly surprised at the intimation given in this postscript, that he knew a secret, respecting which he could not forbear to compliment his Lordship on this occasion; and the more especially, if we may suppose that it was the new Folio that he had before him. The letter runs thus: :

"To the Lord Viscount St. Alban:

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"MOST HONORED LORD, I have received your great and noble token and favour of the 9th of April, and can but return the humblest of my thanks for your Lordship's vouchsafing so to visit this poorest and unworthiest of your servants. It doth me good at heart, that, although I be not where I was in place, yet I am in the fortune of your Lordship's favour, if I may call that fortune, which I observe to be so unchangeable. I pray hard that it may once come in my power to serve you for it; and who can tell but that, as fortis imaginatio generat casum, so strong desires may do as much? Sure I am that mine are ever waiting on your

1 Letter to Matthew.

2 Letter 1623, Works (Mont.), XII. 445.

Lordship; and wishing as much happiness as is due to parable virtue, I humbly do your Lordship reverence. "Your Lordship's most obliged and humble servant,

your

incom

"TOBIE MATTHEW.

"P. S. The most prodigious wit that ever I knew of my nation, and of this side of the sea, is of your Lordship's name, though he be known by another." (1)

Now, who else but this same Shakespeare could have been considered by Mr. Matthew to be a cover for the most prodigious wit of all England, at that day? or what else could have more naturally prompted this unique postscript than the new History of Henry VII., all sparkling with Shakespearean diamonds, or indeed this Folio, all blazing with the Baconian wit, power, and beauty? It could not have been Bacon as philosopher, statesman, or eminent prose-writer; for all his known works were published under his own name. Neither could the word wit have been used here in the more general sense of that day as meaning genius and ability in general; for in this sense, it could only have been applied to these same acknowledged works. It must therefore have been intended in the special sense of the word as now used. That Bacon was a great wit in every sense of the word, needs no demonstration here. We have direct and satisfactory evidence of it in his own writings everywhere; and it has been proverbial with all who have written concerning him, from Ben Jonson to Macaulay. Queen Elizabeth said he "had a great wit and much learning"; Ben Jonson, that he could not "spare or pass by a jest"; Sir Robert Naunton, a contemporary, says of Sir Nicholas Bacon, that he was an arch-peece of wit, and of wisdome," and "abundantly facetious; which tooke much with the queene"; and he adds that "he was father to that refined wit, which since hath acted a disastrous part on the publique stage, and of late sate in his

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1 Works (Mont.), XII. 468; (III., Philad. 160).

father's roome as lord chancellor";1 and this testimony of Mr. Matthew that he was a "most prodigious wit" may be taken as settling the question. Clearly, somebody was shining in borrowed feathers, which not only belonged to Bacon, but made him the most prodigious wit of that side of the sea; and of this, Mr. Matthew was unquestionably a competent judge. It could have been no other than that "upstart crow beautified with our feathers," that the incredulous Greene knew for "a Johannes factotum” and “the only Shake-scene in a country."

Mr. Matthew was much in the habit of adding postscripts to his letters to Bacon. In one, he asks his lordship to send him "some of his philosophical labours"; and in a letter to Mr. Matthew, Bacon writes: "I have sent you some copies of my book of the Advancement,' which you desired, and a little work of my recreation, which you desired not." 2 What this "little work" was, there is no intimation; and it might be altogether too great a stretch of the imagination to suppose it may have been a quarto play. Nevertheless, it may not be unreasonable to believe that these little recreations of his other studies may have helped to furnish the key, by which the secret had been unlocked. In fact, it would be well-nigh incredible, that a scholar, who was so familiar with Bacon and his writings as Ben Jonson, or Sir Tobie Matthew, must have been, should not have discovered the hand and soul of Francis Bacon in these plays of Shakespeare as certainly as a Bernouilli the genius of Newton in the anonymous solution of a mathematical problem, -ex ungue Leonem: - especially, when he ventured to write in this manner in the Sonnets::

"Why is my verse so barren of new pride?
So far from variation or quick change?
Why with the time do I not glance aside

To new-found methods, and to compounds strange?
Why write I still all one, ever the same,

1 Fragmenta Regalia, 75, (London, 1824).

2 Letter, Works (Philad.), III. 71; (Mont.), XVI., Note A A A. (1605).

And keep invention in a noted weed,

That every word doth almost tell my name,

Showing their birth, and where they did proceed?"
Sonnet lxxvi.

Which wonder shall find an echo in his Prayers, thus: "The state and bread of the poor and oppressed have been precious in mine eyes: I have hated all cruelty and hardness of heart: I have, though in a despised weed, procured the good of all men." 1

§ 4. CONTEMPORARY WRITERS.

A critical comparison of these poetical works with the writings of contemporary authors will result always in a complete exclusion of them all from any competition for this authorship. Question has been made by some critics as to some few of the earlier and less conspicuous plays, but of the greater ones, and especially of those which have a more philosophical character, as also of the sonnets and poems, no well-grounded doubt has ever been entertained, that they were all the work of one and the same writer. In these, as indeed in all the rest, the style and manner of the genuine Shakespeare are so distinctly marked and so peculiar as at once to distinguish them from the productions of any other writer of that or any other age. The style and genius of Shakespeare have ever been considered, if not unapproachable, at least perfectly sui generis. In this comparison, in respect of philosophic depth of insight, knowledge of art, and the fundamental principles of dramatic composition, Ben Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Massinger, Ford, Marlowe, Drayton, and the rest, sink to the level of ordinary writers: their range in the world of thought and knowledge lay far below him. Bacon's prose, compared with that of other writers of his own or any other age, is no less distinguishable, nor less decidedly characteristic of the individual man.

1 Prayer, Works, (Philad.), II. 405.

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Sir Walter Raleigh seems to have been considered, by at least one writer,1 to have been equal to a share in this work. He was indeed a polished courtier, a learned man for that day, and a patron of learning and art, himself a distinguished author in prose and verse, a scientific investigator and a somewhat philosophical thinker. He was thirty-seven years of age when the "Titus Andronicus appeared, in 1589. His youth was spent abroad in the wars; and, after his introduction at Court, in 1582, his time and attention must have been more or less exclusively occupied with his courtly company, his parliamentary duties, his military expeditions, his voyages of discovery, and his various business transactions, down to the death of the Queen and the beginning of his troubles in 1603; and the History of the World" and other writings on which he is known to have been employed, while a prisoner in the Tower, will scarcely leave room for the prosecution of a work of this kind. Any theory that these works were the product of a society, or club, or partnership, of two or more individuals, will have to be given up as wholly untenable : it is utterly inadmissible. The earlier part of Raleigh's life was outwardly active, full of personal display, great exploit, and stirring events. He took trunks of books on his voyages, and experimented in chemistry at home; but, on the whole, his time for study must have been small, and his range of thought and knowledge limited, in comparison with Bacon. It is plain from his writings, that his studies in the ancient learning and philosophy, and his acquirements generally, were rather superficial than profound in this comparison. His "Treatise on the Soul" may be taken as a fair test of his philosophic depth; and, compared with Bacon and Shakespeare, it shrinks into the dimensions of a very small affair. And what is still more conclusive of him, as of the rest of his contemporaries, his writings, in prose and verse, exhibit another style and man altogether.

1 Phil. of Shaks. Plays Unfolded, by Delia Bacon, 1857.

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