been justified by the presumed privileges of a Warwickshire betrothal.

There has been some dispute among Shakespeare's biographers about his religious faith, a few having presented evidences tending to show that he was a Roman Catholic; but the great majority, being of Protestant politics, discourage that idea. Bacon we know to have been a Protestant of an extreme type, and from this difference springs an interesting point of our investigation. The question presents itself at once, as to which religious faith is most manifested in the plays. If they were the production of a Roman Catholic, Bacon could not possibly have been their author.

What we have first upon our hands, however, is the singular anomaly presented by the spectacle of a genius of the creative order, who was born in comparative humbleness, never betraying one emotion for, or exhibiting a single sympathy with, the down-trodden classes, whose degradations and miseries must have constantly intruded upon his subtle comprehension. But the mist lifts before the light of facts. We have sufficient evidence that Shakespeare was, though probably of a cheerful, amiable disposition, a calculating, money-saving man; and the conclusion from the circumstances of his business in London and at Stratford must be, that he sometimes suppressed his natural sentiments to a convenience of association and a sense of interest. His first patron, when he was a theatrical manager, was the Earl of Southampton, a prodigal young nobleman of enormous wealth, who, together with the Earls of Essex and of Rutland, were constant visitors at his theatre."

Indeed, so thoroughly had Shakespeare established himself under the patronage of Southampton, that he dedicated to him his "Venus and Adonis," and in the following year, also his "Lucrece." By way of showing, moreover, the extent to which the dramatist had advanced himself into his lordship's favor, Richard Grant White states (p. 97) that Shakespeare took this liberty in the matter of "Venus and Adonis" without, "as the dedication shows," asking his lordship's permis

The "Authorship of Shakespeare," Nathaniel Holmes, p. 95.

sion; a very unusual responsibility, says the same commentator, to assume with the name of any man, much less a nobleman, unless he had felt himself secure in his lordship's good graces. Southampton was at this time under twenty years of age, and Essex (subsequently the favorite of Queen Elizabeth) was but four years older. In speaking of these young noblemen and their associates, Judge Holmes, in his essay in favor of the Baconian theory, says that Southampton, Rutland, and the rest of Essex's jovial crew "pass their time in London in merely going to plays every day."

It was about this time, says Rowe, that "my Lord Southampton at one time gave Shakespeare £1,000 to enable him to go through a purchase he had a mind to." This princely gift is, of course, ascribed to Southampton's estimation of the muse of Shakespeare, but, inasmuch as Southampton never exhibited any appreciation of literature beyond having the run of Shakespeare's theatre, we are justified in attributing the earl's attachment to the manager to considerations which frequently operate with young men of means and fashion down to the present day. It is true that, in Shakespeare's time, there were no actresses attached to theatrical companies, the female parts being performed by boys, but it was the custom of ladies of quality to sit upon the stage during theatrical entertainments, and there are several anecdotes of intrigues having taken place between them and young gallants under such circumstances. And this theory of personal familiarity between Shakespeare and a coroneted gallant of nineteen is none the less likely than the one which ascribes Southampton's liberality to his patronage of literature, since that nobleman lived till he was fifty-four without having given any other evidence of a love of letters."

This suggestion, which merely intimates that Shakespeare's good nature or facility of disposition, in allowing his friends "the run of his house," never troubled itself with looking after their purposes, has been denounced by some over-zealous English critics, as a most villainous insinuation; while one, the "London Civil Service Gazette," generously insinuates that, from the glibness with which Mr. Wilkes prefers the charge, "they may yet have to learn that the character of baud confers an honorable distinction in American society." Nevertheless, it might be

Considerations such as the foregoing would as satisfactorily account for the absence in Shakespeare of liberal sentiments, as the natural tendencies of Bacon's rank would account for the latter's aristocratic chilliness of heart.

Let not the rapt worshipers of Avon's bard, whose sacred ecstasy is thus rudely broken in upon, suppose I take pleasure in these hard statistics. Nothing can reduce Shakespeare from the supreme elevation which he holds in the United States as the poet of the English-speaking race; but we in America take no interest in him as a politician, nor yet as a moralist; and, surely it is wiser for us, who are not involved in any tan. gles of allegiance, to disenchant ourselves of the spells fumed up by loyalty and doctrine, and treat this mighty mortal as a man. Perhaps the most curious and interesting problem which can thus be brought to our comprehension is-what amount of dirt may mix with and be instrumental in the production of a flaming gem. And Bacon is as subject to this criticism as Shakespeare.

curious to know what such sensitive writers as the above would think of the moral condition of our poet's mind when he wrote the 20th, the 42d, and the 121st Sonnets.

CHAPTER III.

LORD BACON.

"They say, best men are molded out of faults."

Measure for Measure, Act V, Scene 1.

THE theory that Lord Verulam (familiarly known as Lord Bacon) was the author of the plays attributed to Shakespeare, first became a matter of general discussion, as I have already stated, through an article by Delia Bacon, in the January number of "Putnam's Magazine" for 1856, published in America -three hundred and fifteen years after Bacon was born, and two hundred and fifty-nine years after William Shakespeare had been buried. The claim set up for Bacon, therefore, is barely nineteen years old, as against the nearly three hundred years of general acceptance, by history, of Shakespeare's rights. Shortly after the appearance of Miss Bacon's essay in the American magazine, she published it, enlarged into a book, with an introduction by Nathaniel Hawthorne. In this shape it crossed the Atlantic, and had its ideas adopted by an English writer named William H. Smith, who supported and extended her views in an ingenious treatise published by him in London in 1857. Eight years afterward, the November number of "Fraser's Magazine" for 1865 showed that Lord Palmerston had become a convert to the Baconian theory, and in the following year Nathaniel Holmes, Professor of Law in Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., issued an elaborate volume of six hundred pages supporting Miss Bacon's view. Here we have the whole scope of the Baconian pretension, comprising at the most a period of twenty years, with a meager following of conspicuous advocates; while, on the

other hand, stand grouped in silent protest a crowd of Baconian biographers, stretching through wellnigh three centuries, who, with the greatest desire to aggrandize the object of their worship, never conceived the idea that Bacon could possibly have been the author of the plays of Shakespeare. Nay, one of the latest, W. Hepworth Dixon, writing as late as 1861,' alludes to Shakespeare distinctly a sa separate person from the subject of his work.

Having thus marshaled the forces of the two parties to the controversy (for the silence of Bacon's biographers practically arrays them on the side of Shakespeare), it now suggests itself that we should inquire briefly into the separate histories of Bacon and Shakespeare, and ascertain what connection each had with the literature of his age, and what, if any, were their relations to one another. They are consigned to us by the history of the times in which they lived as two characters; one as the unapproachable Master of Philosophy and Law, and the other as the most transcendent genius of Poetry and Imagination.'

LORD BACON.

SIR FRANCIS BACON, Lord Verulam, Viscount St. Albans, and Lord High Chancellor of England, was born January 22, 1560. He matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge, at the age of thirteen, and soon afterward passed two years in travel on the European continent. In 1584 he first sat in the House of Commons as member for Melcombe, and from this time (though he was by courtesy the Queen's Lord Keeper at the age of ten), may be dated the commencement of his public official career.

In the parliamentary sessions of 1586-'88 young Bacon played an influential part. "These three sessions," says Dixon, "had to save the liberties of England and the faith of

'Dixon's "Personal History of Lord Bacon," Boston, 1861.

"Those two incomparable men, the Prince of Poets and the Prince of Philosophers, who made the Elizabethan age a more glorious and important era in the history of the human mind than the age of Pericles, of Agustus, or of Leo."-Lord Macaulay, "Essay on Burleigh and his Times," vol. v, p. 611, ed. Trevelyan.