kindly, and said I ought to have known Lord Paimerston, who to his dying day maintained the same thing. I asked what were Lord Palmerston's views. Mr. Austen said that he did not know; that he had some vaporous notions which the circumstances of the men's lives did not warrant. I said that if the idea savored of "inane," I should be happy to be a fool in such good company as Lord Palmerston's; and privately continued my researches. In 1874 we were in London, and I casually met with Fraser's Magazine, July or August, containing that remarkably fair, calm article which has now become almost classic. It summed up all that had been published on the subject, and brought forward the names of Miss Delia Bacon, and Mr. W. H. Smith, and Judge Holmes, of not one of whom had I ever before heard. I was enchanted to find that there was nothing which upset the theories which had been building themselves up about Bacon. I told Archdeacon Pott, my husband's cousin, what I thought, and that the only scientific way of getting at the truth was to take, separately, every branch of Bacon's learning, every subject of his studies and researches, placing them under headings as in a cyclopædia, and comparing them with Shakespeare's utterances. I proposed to begin with concrete substantives, to prove (what I already knew was a fact) that Bacon and Shakespeare talked of the same things; then I would collect all the passages which showed their thoughts on those same things; and then, again, the actual words which they used to express their thoughts. My cousin thought that the task would be Herculean, and require an army of able workers, but no aid was then to be had. "The learned" did not like my notions, and fought shy of discussing them. "The unlearned" were useless; and the small amount of work which I paid for was done in a perfunctory or uncomprehending way which rendered it valueless. So I remembered my father's dictum that Time and Force are convertible terms; and I recollected also a mushroom which, in a day and a night, heaved up a great threshold stone at our garden door; and I thought that by small, persistent efforts I would be even with that mushroom. So I began systematically on the simplest subjects - Horticulture, Agriculture, etc.; arranging each detail under a heading, and writing on the right half of the sheet what Bacon said, and on the left what Shakespeare said. After doing Horticulture, Natural History, Medicine, Metallurgy, Chemistry, Meteorology, Astronomy, Astrology, Light, Heat, Sound, Man, Metaphysics, Life, Death, etc., I proceeded to Politics; the State, Kings, Seditions, etc.; Law, in all its branches; Mythology, Religion; the Bible, Superstitions, Witchcraft or Demonology, etc. Then History, Ancient and Modern, Geography, allusions to Classical Lore, Fiction, Arts, the Theater, Music, Poetry, Painting, Cosmetics, Dress, Furniture, Domestic Affairs, Trades, Professions; in short, everything. Then for the Grammar, (by aid of Dr. Abbott's Shakespearean Grammar), and the Philology, by an exhaustive process of comparison, and by Promus notes. Then I wrote a sketch of Bacon's life, consisting of twenty-nine or thirty chapters, wherein, as I believed, I traced his history, written in the Plays. Fortunately I made no attempt to publish this. Meanwhile I began another dictionary, which was well advanced when I broke down in health. Having taken out all the metaphors, similes and figurative turns of speech from the prose works, I compared them as before with the same sort of thing in the Plays. I made about 3,000 headings, illustrated by about 30,000 passages. This extraordinary mental activity and industry is quite Eacon ian; it O'er-informs its tenement of clay, It is the spirit mastering the flesh; and it reminds one of the expression used by one of the great French generals of the eighteenth century, who found himself trembling, as he was going into battle: "Thou tremblest, O body of mine! Thou wouldst tremble still more if thou knewest where I am going to take thee to-day!" And this marvelous mental labor has been carried on in the midst of the demands of a large family and the exactions of many and high social duties. I was amused to find Mrs. Pott saying in a recent letter,—in which she was discussing some very grave questions,—“But I must stop; for I have to give one of the children a lesson on the violin." Mrs. Pott is one of the most comprehensive and penetrating minds ever born on English soil, and her nation will yet recognize her as such; and she is, withal, a generous, modest and unpretending lady. It is an auspicious sign for the future of the human race when women, who in the olden time were the slaves or the playthings of men, prove that their more delicate nervous organization is not at all incompatible with the greatest mental labors or the profoundest and most original conceptions. And if it be a fact—as all creeds believe that our intelligences are plastic in the hands of the external spiritual influences, then we may naturally expect that woman - purer, higher, nobler and more sensitive than man will in the future lead the race up many of the great sun-crowned heights of progress, where thicker-brained man can only follow in her footsteps. I owe Mrs. Pott an apology for venturing to quote so extensively, as I have done, from her private letters, but I trust the pleasure it will give the public will plead my excuse. V. OTHER ADVOCATES OF BACON. Besides these distinguished laborers in the field of this great discussion, as advocates of Francis Bacon, there have been many humbler, but no less gallant defenders of his cause, who, in pamphlet, magazine, or newspaper, have set forth the reasons for the faith that was in them; and who deserve now to be remembered for their sagacity and courage. Among these I would mention. Francis Fearon, a brother of Mrs. Pott, whose able lecture, recently, upon the question of Bacon's authorship of the Plays, has been read by millions of people in England and America; the unknown writer of the article which appeared in Fraser's Magazine, London, November, 1855; Richard J. Hinton, of Washington, D. C., who published an able three-column article in the Round Table, of New York, November 17, 1866, and has subsequently done yeoman service in the cause; Rev. A. B. Bradford, of Enon, Pennsylvania, who printed, in the Golden Age, May 30, 1834, and in the Argus and Radical, of Beaver, Pennsylvania, December 29, 1875, a report of a six-column lecture on the same theme; J. V. B. Prichard, who wrote a ten-page article for Fraser's Magazine, London, August, 1874 (which was reproduced in Littell's Living Age, October, 1874, and attracted marked attention); the Ven. Archdeacon William T. Leach, LL.D., of McGill College and University, Montreal, Canada, who delivered a lecture before the College on Bacon and Shakespeare, November 13, 1879, and warmly espoused the side of Francis. Bacon as the author of the Plays. In addition to these I would also mention: George Stronach, M.A., who advocated the Baconian theory in The Hornet, London, August 11, 1875; M. J. Villemain, who published two articles, in L'Instruction Publique: Revue des Lettres, Science et Arts, Paris, August 31 and September 7, 1878. Also my friend O. Follett, Esq., of Sandusky, Ohio, who printed a pamphlet of forty-seven pages, May, 1879, and another May, 1881, of twelve pages, and has contributed a strong communication to the Register, of Sandusky, Ohio, April 5, 1883, in answer to Richard Grant White's "Bacon-Shakespeare Craze." Mr. Follett has, I understand, ready for the press a larger work on the Baconian authorship, which I hope will soon see the light. I would also refer to Henry G. Atkinson, F.G.S., who, in the Spiritualist, London, July 4, 1879, and in many other periodicals, has advocated the Baconian theory; also to O. C. Strouder, author of an article in the Wittenberger Magazine, of Springfield, Ohio, November, 1880; also to William W. Ferrier, of Angola, Indiana, who contributed numerous able articles on the subject to the Herald of that town in the year 1881; also to E. W. Tullidge, editor of Tullidge's Quarterly Magazine, Salt Lake City, Utah, who has written several strong articles in advocacy of Bacon's authorship of the Plays; also to John W. Bell, of Toledo, Ohio, who has written several newspaper articles of the same tenor; also to Robert M. Theobald, of London, England, one of the officers of the Bacon Society of London, and an able and earnest advocate of Baconianism in leading English journals. I would also mention the names of Edward Fillebrown, of Brookline, Massachusetts, and the late Hon. Geo. B. Smith, at one time a leading lawyer of the State of Wisconsin, whom I had the pleasure of knowing. I would also refer to the unknown writer of an able article in defense of Bacon's authorship of the Plays, in the Allgemeine Zeitung, Stuttgart and Munich, March 1, 1883, four columns in length. I would also refer to the labors of two of my friends, William Henry Burr, of Washington, D. C., a powerful controversialist upon the question; and to Hon. J. H. Stotsenburg, of New Albany, Indiana, the author of a very interesting series of articles in an Indianapolis newspaper, entitled “An Indian in Indiana." VI. APPLETON MORGAN. I regret that I cannot include in this catalogue of Baconians Mr. Appleton Morgan, the author of The Shakespearean Myth, published in 1881, by Robert Clarke & Co., of Cincinnati, Ohio (8vo, pp. 342); but Mr. Morgan writes me recently that he is not a Baconian. This is the more to be regretted because his book is a powerful assault upon Shakspere's authorship; and it seems to me that if Shakspere did not write the Plays there is no one left to dispute the palm with Francis Bacon. Certainly there could not have been half a dozen Shakespeares lying around loose in London just at that time. Nature does not breed her monsters in litters. While Mr. Morgan gives us in his work few new facts, not already contained in the writings of Miss Bacon, William Henry Smith and Judge Holmes, he arrays the argument in the case with the skill of a trained lawyer, and brings out his conclusions in a forcible manner. But I regret to see evidences, in some of Mr. Morgan's recent utterances, which lead me to fear that he has recanted the opinions expressed in The Myth, and that he thinks the man of Stratford may, after all, have written the Plays! |