BOOK III. CONCLUSIONS. CHAPTER I. DELIA BACON. Patience and sorrow strove Which should express her goodliest. King Lear, iv, 3. O work in regard to the Baconian theory would be complete N° without some reference to Miss Delia Bacon, who first announced to the world the belief that Francis Bacon was the real author of the Plays. America should especially cherish the memory of this distinguished lady. Our literature has been, to too great an extent, a colonial imitation, oftentimes diluted, of English originals. But here is a case where one of our own transplanted race, out of the depths of her own consciousness, marshaled to her conclusions by her profound knowledge, advanced to a great and original conception. I am indebted to Mr. W. H. Wyman' for the following notes of Miss Bacon's biography: Delia Bacon was born in Tallmadge, Ohio, February 2, 1811. She was the daughter of Rev. David Bacon, one of the early Western missionaries, and sister of the late Rev. Dr. Leonard Bacon. She was educated at Miss Catharine E. Beecher's school, in Hartford, and is described as a woman of rare intellect and attainments. Her profession was that of a teacher and lecturer: the first woman, 1 Bacon-Shakespeare Bibliography. Mrs. Farrar says, whom she had ever known to speak in public. At this time she resided in Boston. Having conceived the idea of the Baconian authorship, she became a monomaniac on the subject. Visiting England, in 1853, in search of proofs for her theory, she spent five years there; first at St. Albans, where she supposed Bacon to have written the Plays; then at London, where she wrote The Philosophy of Shakespeare Unfolded, and subsequently at Stratford-on-Avon. Here, after the publication and non-success of her book, she lost her reason wholly and entirely. She was returned to her friends in Hartford, in April, 1858, and died there, September 2, 1859. Mrs. John Farrar, in her interesting little book, Recollections of Seventy Years, (pp. 319, etc.), gives the following account of Miss Bacon's first appearance as a lecturer: The first lady whom I ever heard deliver a public lecture was Miss Delia Bacon, who opened her career in Boston, as teacher of history, by giving a preliminary discourse describing her method, and urging upon her hearers the importance of the study. I had called on her that day for the first time, and found her very nervous and anxious about her first appearance in public. She interested me at once, and I resolved to hear her speak. Her person was tall and commanding, her finely-shaped head was well set on her shoulders, her face was handsome and full of expression, and she moved with grace and dignity. The hall in which she spoke was so crowded that I could not get a seat, but she spoke so well that I felt no fatigue from standing. She was at first a little embarrassed, but soon became so engaged in recommending the study of history to all present, that she became eloquent. Her course of oral lessons or lectures on history interested her class of ladies so much that she was induced to repeat them, and I heard several who attended them speak in the highest terms of them. She not only spoke but read well, and when on the subject of Roman history she delighted her audience by giving them, with great effect, some of Macaulay's Lays. I persuaded her to give her lessons in Cambridge, and she had a very appreciative class, assembled in the large parlor of the Brattle House. She spoke without notes, entirely from her own well-stored memory; and she would so group her facts as to present to us historical pictures calculated to make a lasting impression. She was so much admired and liked in Cambridge, that a lady there invited her to spend the winter with her as her guest, and I gave her the use of my parlor for another course of lectures. In these she brought down her history to the time of the birth of Christ, and I can never forget how clear she made it to us that the world was only then made fit for the advent of Jesus. She ended with a fine climax that was quite thrilling. In her Cambridge course she had maps, charts, models, pictures, and everything she needed to illustrate her subject. This added much to her pleasure and ours. All who saw her then must remember how handsome she was, and how gracefully she used her wand in pointing to the illustrations of her subject. I used to be reminded by her of Raphael's sibyls, and she often spoke like an oracle. She and a few of her class would often stay after the lesson and take tea with me, and then she would talk delightfully for the rest of the evening. It was very inconsiderate in us to allow her to do so, and when her course ended she was half dead with fatigue. II. HER LOVE AFFAIR. Delia Bacon's life was one of many sorrows. It would almost seem as if there is some great law of compensation running through human lives, so that those who are to be happy in immortal fame too often pay for it by unhappy careers on earth. It is difficult to conceive of a more wretched life than was that of Francis Bacon. For a few short years only he rode the waves of triumphant success; but his youth was enshrouded in poverty, and his age covered with dishonor. Even the great philosophical works, which the world now holds as priceless, were received with general ridicule and contempt; but his fame is to-day the greatest on earth, and will so continue as long as our civilization endures. And we seem to see the same great law of compensation running through the life of poor, unhappy Delia Bacon. Filled with a divine enthusiasm for truth, her ideas were received by an ignorant and bigoted generation with shouts of mockery. Nay, more, as if fortune had not done its worst in this, her very heart was lacerated and her womanly pride wounded, by a creature in the shape of a a Reverend (!) Alexander McWhorter. man A writer in the Philadelphia Times of December 26th, 1886, gives the following account of this extraordinary affair: Four young men were smoking in a chamber at a hotel in New Haven. It is not to be assumed that they were drinking as well as smoking; for at least one of them had been a theological student in the Yale Divinity School, who was then a resident licentiate of the university; and another was a nephew of a professor in the theological department of that institution. Although they were so near to the "cloth," they were a set of “jolly dogs," these young men, and so not averse to a good cigar. Indeed, the resident licentiate, in whose room they were gathered, was not only a good fellow, but a very rich young man. Presently, a waiter entered and delivered a note to the host. It was couched in the following words: Miss Delia Bacon will be happy to see Mr. at the rooms at the Hotel this evening, or at any time that may be convenient to him. Delia Bacon was the daughter of a Michigan missionary, and when she came east in her girlhood, it was to qualify herself as a teacher. At school she made rapid progress in everything except in English composition, to excel in which she most aspired, and, later on, it was conceded that her learning was not only unusual, but extraordinary, in a woman. She was, indeed, from the outset of her career as an instructor, a sibyl in aspect, as in fact; and her classes at New Haven and Hartford, when she succeeded in establishing them, soon became the fashion. Her lectures, for such her lessons really were, were attended by the most cultivated ladies of the two chief cities of Connecticut, the wives of the governors of the State, the judges of the courts, the professors in the colleges, and other |