The noble lines in which he sang the praise of Shakespeare form the prologue to this volume. They may also serve as its epilogue. It is fitting that its first and last words should be couched in his language.

A humble attempt has been made in these pages to depict Shakespeare as a teacher, loyal to his country and his God. In closing this brief tribute to his imagination and his power of expression, it is a supreme pleasure to recall his praise as a poet, sung by his great contemporary, Milton.

APPENDIX I.

(See note, pp. 6, 230.)

A friend of the author has frequently suggested to him that it might be well to include in this volume some refutation of the silly idea that Lord Bacon was the author of Shakespeare's Plays. But so much has been published on the subject that any refutation of it in detail would be wearisome to readers, and would be an intolerable occupation for the writer. Nevertheless, as Lord Bacon, ungifted with imagination, did once invade the realm of rhyme, it may perhaps be well to give some idea of the power he displayed.

The sort of Prologue which was deemed worthy of being spoken at the Inner Temple before Queen Elizabeth in the decade in which Lord Bacon was born may be estimated by the following lines:

Full thirty years in woful wise afflicted he had been,

All which long time he took no food, but forced against his will,
Even with a spoon to pour some broth his teeth between,

And though they sought by force this wise to feed him still,
He always strove with all his might the same on ground to spill.

How many Prologues of such calibre Bacon may have heard must be left to conjecture. Their influence must have been strong upon him, or his want of imagination must have blinded him to their defects; for when he tried to write poetry himself he vied with them in doggrel. In an evil hour for himself and his idolators he published, in 1625, a "Translation of Certain Psalms into English Verse by the Right Hon. Francis Lord Verulam, Viscount St. Alban." It is not too much to say that his so-called English Verse" robbed the Psalms of the rhythm and dignity which they already possessed in the English authorized version. Let a few specimens be glanced at:

PSALM I.

With wicked men it is not so,

Their lot is of another kind:
All as the chaff which to and fro

Is toss'd at mercy of the wind.

And when he shall in judgment plead,

A casting sentence bide he must:

So shall he not lift up his head
In the assembly of the just.

For why? the Lord hath special eye,
To be the godly's stay at call:
And has given over, righteously,
The wicked man to take his fall.

PSALM XII.

And now thou wilt not first thy word forsake,
Nor yet the righteous man that leans thereto,
But wilt his safe protection undertake,

In spite of all their force and wiles can do.
And time it is, O Lord, thou didst draw nigh;
The wicked daily do enlarge their bands;
And that which makes them follow ill a vie
Rule is betaken to unworthy hands.

PSALM CIV.

But who can blaze thy beauties, Lord, aright?
They turn the brittle beams of mortal sight.
Upon thy head thou wear'st a glorious crown,
All set with violets, polished with renown.

This earth as with a veil once covered was,
The waters overflowed all the mass;

But upon his rebuke away they fled,

And then the hills began to show their head.

And that the earth no more might drowned be,
He set the sea his bounds of liberty,

And though his waves resound and beat the shore,
Yet it is bridled by his holy lore.

Then did the rivers seek their proper places,

And found their heads, their issues, and their races.

The asses wild that hide in wilderness,

Do thither come their thirst for to refresh.

There hast thou set the great leviathan,
That makes the seas to seethe like boiling pan.
All these do ask of thee their meat to live,
Which in due season thou to them dost give.

Surely Bacon's own friends, if he have any, gifted with a sense of imagination and of the beauty which dwells in harmony of words, cannot demean themselves so far as to think that the author of the above halting corruption of the authorized version of the Psalms was also the creator of the harmonies which abound in Shakespeare.

It is so repulsive to transcribe Bacon's doggrel that to sweeten this page it is proper to include in it a few of Shakespeare's own words,

which, though often quoted, cannot be quoted too often. Their music is an anodyne for those who have been tortured by Bacon's "jarring discords." The quality of mercy is not strained,

It droppeth like the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,

Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;

It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,

It is an attribute to God himself;

And earthly power doth then show likest God's,
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,

That in the course of justice none of us

Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;

And that same prayer should teach us all to render

The deeds of mercy.

The tender mercies of his friends were cruel to the experimental philosopher, when they claimed for him the highest gift of imagination in regions which were not dreamt of in his philosophy. He, at any rate, was no accomplice in making claims so baseless, and so much out of harmony with his well-known character and performances. Requiescat. He had his own style, and Shakespeare had another. The learned James Spedding, the author of "Life and Letters of Bacon," 1876, who edited Bacon's works, expressed his own opinion thus:-"I doubt whether there are five lines together to be found in Bacon which could be mistaken for Shakespeare, or five lines in Shakespeare which could be mistaken for Bacon by one who was familiar with their several styles and practised in such observations" (LondonTimes," 23rd December, 1901).

If the serious verdict of a learned critic be required in these pages, it is, perhaps, proper to cite that of Mr. Spedding.*

The extracts from Bacon's verses are taken from vol. vii. of the "Works of Francis Bacon, by James Spedding, M.A., Trin. Coll., Cambridge, and others." As reference has been made to Spedding, it is perhaps proper to note that Sir Theodore Martin (in "Blackwood's Magazine," February, 1888) cited the following words, written by Spedding :-"To ask me to believe that Bacon was the author of these plays is like asking me to believe that Lord Brougham was the author not only of Dickens' works, but of Thackeray's and Tennyson's besides. That the author of Pickwick' was Charles Dickens

APPENDIX II.

(See note, p. 12.)

The text might have been made to seem more cogent if an unpublished document, communicated to the author by permission, had been inserted at page 12. It was communicated to the author by one whom he has the happiness to call his friend-Alfred H. Huth, Esq., owner of the famous Huth Library.

The writer of it is the learned A. F. Leach, Fellow of All Souls, Oxford, &c., who writes that if the boys in an Ed. VI. Grammar School (temp. Shakespeare)

did really master their classics in the way Hoole says, and (though it reads like a fairy story) we are bound to believe that, published as an actual course of study by a practical schoolmaster, it was not only possible, but actual, the less we hear of the impossibility of Shakespeare having written Shakespeare because he left school at fifteen the better. ... At ten they learnt the Assembly's Catechism in Greek the Greek grammar

of Camden and wrote "all sorts of English and Latin verses" and familiar and elegant epistles. In the Fifth Form, age eleven, they did daily a dozen verses of Greek Testament and extracts from the historians. They got a perfect knowledge of Greek syntax over Isocrates, and translated Psalms from English to Latin and Latin to Greek, and compared their version with the Septuagint. They began Rhetoric in the form of speeches.. . Virgil's Eclogues they were to read; at first ten or twelve lines, and then a whole Eclogue at a time; and on Thursday afternoon to turn Greek epigrams into Latin and English verses. . . The Sixth Form, only twelve to thirteen, made themes, orations, declamations in English, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew."

These particulars relate to the Ed. VI. Grammar School at Rotheram, of which Hoole was the master. The course at Stratford may have been similar or dissimilar. No particulars with regard to it have been handed down to us. But Mr. Leach arrives at the conclusion that Shakespeare would have found quite as good a classical training at Stratford-on-Avon as at Rugby (and indeed at that epoch much better).” It may be well to call attention to the fact that Mr. Leach says that

66

I know upon no better authority than that upon which I know that the author of Hamlet was a man called William Shakespeare; and in what respect is the one more difficult to believe than the other? If you had fixed upon anybody else rather than Bacon, as the true author, anybody of whom I knew nothing, I should have been scarcely less incredulous. But if there were any reason for supposing that the real author was somebody else, I think I am in a condition to say that whoever it was, it was not Francis Bacon. The difficulties which such a supposition would involve would be innumerable and altogether insurmountable."