Part 3

(1) The grammar of this verse is shocking both here and in the version of 1599. And there are considerable variations in the two versions. In that of 1599 the first word "Come" is omitted, without which the song could hardly be sung. Other slight defects of measure appear in both. But the editor of Marlowe's Works has carefully corrected the grammar and the measure.

And we will sit upon the rocks, Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks, By shallow rivers, to whose falls Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses, And a thousand fragrant posies, A cap of flowers and a kirtle Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle.

A gown made of the finest wool, Which from our pretty lambs we pull, Fair lined slippers for the cold, With buckles of the purest gold: A belt of straw, and ivy buds With coral clasps and amber studs.

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And if these pleasures may thee move, Come live with me and be my love. The shepherd swains shall dance and sing For thy delights each May-morning; If these delights thy mind may move, Then live with me and be my love.

Finis. Chr. Marlowe.

Here we have Marlowe credited with this song in 1600, seven years after his death. Is there any other evidence that he wrote it? A single line at the close of a ditty in his "Jew of Malta" parallels with the first line of this, except the first word:

"Shall live with me and be my love."

The song, with many verbal amendments, and omitting the last stanza, is inserted in his "Works," 1826.

In the "Merry Wives of Windsor" act iii, scene ly Sir Hugh Evans sings the following four lines:

"To shallow rivers, to whose falls Melodious birds sing madrigals; There we will make our peds of roses, And a thousand fragrant posies."

This play was written in the latter part of 1599. In the earliest form of it Sir Hugh transposes and varies the lines thus:

"And then she made him beds of roses, And a thousand fragrant posies."

Then after three lines of incoherent speech:

"To shallow rivers, and to falls Melodious birds sing madrigals."

It would seem as if the song was familiar to the public in 1599 We now add from the "Helicon" the rest of No. xx of "The Passionate Pilgrim," enlarged from one stanza to six:

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The Nymph's reply to the Shepherd. If all the world and love were young, And truth in every shepherd's tongue, These pretty pleasures might me move, To live with thee, and be thy love.

Time drives the flocks from field to fold, When rivers rage, and rocks grow cold; And Philomel becometh dumb; The rest complain of cares to come.

The flowers do fade, and wanton fields To wayward Winter reckoning yields; A honey tongue, a heart of gall, Is fancy's Spring, but sorrow's fall.

Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses, Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies, Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten, In folly ripe, in reason rotten.

Thy belt of straw, and ivy buds, Thy coral clasps and amber studs, All these in me no means can move, To come to thee and be thy love.

But could youth last, and love still breed, Had joys no date, nor age no need, Then these delights my mind might move, To live with thee and be thy love.

Finis. Ignoto.

The editor of the third edition of the "Helicon" 1812, says in regard to "Ignoto:"

"This signature appears to have been generally, though not exclusively, subscribed to the pieces of Sir Walter Raleigh. It is also subscribed to one piece since appropriated to Shakspere, [No. xviii,] and to one Which, according to Ellis, belongs to Richard Barnfield [No. xxi.] The celebrated answer to Marlowe's, 'Come live with me,' here subscribed _Ignoto_, is given expressly to Raleigh by Isaac Walton in his 'Complete Angler,' first published in 1653."

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What could Walton know about it fifty years after the publication of the song and answer as above? On such worthless testimony the Nymph's Answer is credited to Raleigh. And we have in the "Encyclopedia of Poetry," 1873, first the song by Marlowe, "_about_ 1590," and then the Nymph's Reply by Raleigh "_about_ 1610." Strange that the Nymph should wait _about_ twenty years to reply, and should then repeat the lines credited to Shakspere in 1599 and to "Ignoto" in 1600! The song perhaps existed before the death of Marlowe in 1593, but was probably composed by "Ignoto," who also wrote "The Nymph's Reply" and numerous other poetical pieces that were published in the "Helicon" in 1600.

"Ignoto" was undoubtedly a concealed poet. Marlowe, Raleigh and Barnfield were not. As early as January 1590, if not a little sooner, "Ignoto" contributed to Spenser's first publication of the "Faery Queen" the following lines:

"To look upon a work of rare devise The which a workman setteth out to view, And not to yield it the deserved prize That unto such a workmanship is due, Doth either prove the judgment to be naught, Or else doth show a mind with envy fraught.

"To labor to commend a piece of work Which no man goes about to discommend, Would raise a jealous doubt that there did lurk Some secret doubt whereto the praise did tend: For when men know the goodness of the wine 'Tis needless for the host to have a sign.

"Thus then, to show my judgment to be such As can discern of colors black and white, As als to free my mind from envy's touch, That never gives to any man his right: I here pronounce this workmanship is such As that no pen can set it forth too much.

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"And thus I hang a garland at the door; Not for to show the goodness of the ware; But such hath been the custom heretofore, And customs very hardly broken are; And when your taste shall tell you this is true, Then look you give your host his utmost due."

In No. viii of "The Passionate Pilgrim" the writer says:

"Dowland to thee is dear, whose heavenly touch Upon the lute doth ravish human sense;

Spenser to me, whose deep conceit is such As, passing all conceit, needs no defense."

Is not this praise of Spenser a substantial repetition of the sentiments expressed by "Ignoto"?

Again, in Shakspere's Sonnet lxxx we read:

"O how I faint when I of you do write, Knowing a better spirit doth use your name, And in the praise thereof spends all his might, To make me tongue-tied, speaking of your fame!"

Spenser praises Essex in one of the Sonnets prefixed to his "Faery Queen," which antedates the Sonnets of Shakspere.

Once more. In No. xviii of "The Passionate Pilgrim" we read:

"Poor Corydon must live alone, Other help for him I see that there is none."

Compare this with the following lines from Spenser's "Colin Clout," dedicated to Sir Walter Raleigh, December 27, 1591, and published in 1595:

"And there is Corydon, though meanly waged, Yet ablest wit of most I know this day."

Was not Bacon the ablest wit of that time? Was

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he not a concealed poet? Was he not "Corydon"? Was he not "Ignoto"?

But what evidence is there that Raleigh used that signature? The "Faery Queen" was publicly dedicated to him, and in the Sonnet addressed to him as one of Spenser's patrons, a forthcoming poem by Raleigh is announced thus:

"Yet, till that thou thy poem wilt make known, Let thy fair Cynthia's praises be thus rudely shown."

That poem was known to Spenser, who in the Dedication said he had fashioned his Queen "according to your [Raleigh's] own excellent conceit of Cynthia," i. e., Queen Elizabeth.

Furthermore, Raleigh contributed two Sonnets in praise of Spenser's "Faery Queen;" these he subscribed with his own initials. Did he at the same time write another encomium and sign it "Ignoto"?

There are sixteen pieces in the "Helicon" subscribed "Ignoto." One of these, "The Nymph's Reply" is ascribed to Raleigh on the testimony of Walton in 1653; and two others are believed by the editor of the third edition, 1812, to belong to Raleigh, because in an early copy of the same "Ignoto" was found pasted over "W. R." Upon such flimsy evidence the modern editor infers that the signature "Ignoto" was "generally, _though not exclusively_, (his own italics,) subscribed to the pieces of Sir Walter Raleigh."

The next piece after "The Nymph's Reply" in the "Helicon" is the following by "Ignoto":

Another of the same nature made since. Come live with me and be my dear, And we will revel all the year, In plains and groves, on hills and dales, Where fragrant air breeds sweetest gates.

There shall you have the beauteous pine, The cedar, and the spreading vine; And all the woods to be a screen, Lest Phoebus kiss my summer queen.

The seat for your disport shall be Over some river in a tree; Where silver sands and pebbles sing Eternal ditties with the Spring.

There shall you see the nymphs at play, And how the Satyrs spend the day; The fishes gliding on the sands, Offering their bellies to your hands.

The birds, with heavenly tuned throats, Possess woods' echoes with sweet notes; Which to your senses will impart A music to inflame the heart.

Upon the bare and leafless oak The ring-dove's wooings will provoke A colder blood than you possess, To play with me and do no less.

In bowers of laurel trimly dight, We will outwear the silent night, While Flora busy is to spread Her richest treasure on our bed.

Ten thousand glow-worms shall attend, And all their sparkling lights shall spend. All to adorn and beautify Your lodging with most majesty.

Then in mine arms will I enclose Lily's fair mixture with the rose; Whose nice perfections in love's play, Shall tune to me the highest key.

Thus as we pass the welcome night In sportful pleasures and delight, The nimble fairies on the grounds Shall dance and sing melodious sounds.

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If these may serve for to entice Your presence to Love's paradise, Then come with me and be my dear, And we will straight begin the year.

Finis. Ignoto.

Who will say that this is not equal to the first song ascribed to Marlowe? What couplet in that surpasses this one?:

"Where silver sands and pebbles sing Eternal ditties with the Spring."

Or this?:

"Ten thousand glow-worms shall attend. And all their sparkling lights shall spend."

For parallels with the first of these couplets take the following:

"Silver stream." Much Ado, iii, 1.

"Sing no more ditties." Ibid, ii, 1.

"Silver currents." K. John, ii, 1.

"The murmuring surge That on the unnumbered idle pebbles chafes."

Ibid, iv, 6.

For a single parallel with the second couplet take this:

"Twenty glow-worms shall our lanterns be."

M. W. Windsor, v, 5.

Similar parallels may be found with other lines of the song. Now are we to believe that Marlowe wrote the first song, and Raleigh the other two signed "Ignoto"? Is it not far more rational and consistent to believe that all three were written by the same pen?

Again, Barnfield has two pieces in the "Helicon," and the editor ascribes to him another signed "Ignoto"--No. xxi, "As it fell upon a day"--while Allibone, in his Dictionary of Authors, makes him the

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author not only of xxi, but of xx--"Come live with me and be my love"--and says that Raleigh's authorship of "The Nymph's Reply" is questioned.

Thus Marlowe is robbed of the only piece ascribed to him in the "Helicon," and Raleigh is left out of it entirely, unless he wrote some other poem signed "Ignoto."

And by the way, poor neglected Shakspere has but a single specimen there--"On a day, alack a day"-- taken from "Love's Labor Lost."

But the confusion about "Ignoto" is still more confounded. On page 112 of the "Helicon" is a song entitled "The Shepherd's Dump," subscribed "S. E. D.," supposed to mean Sir Edward Dyer, and on page 224 the same identical song reappears entitled "Thirsis, the Shepherd, to his pipe," and signed "Ignoto." The editor of 1812 supposes it was reprinted to make a few corrections in the last stanza; but as the verbal variations in that stanza make it positively worse, it is more likely that the compiler did not notice the repetition, but inadvertently put both in as he found them.

But even this is not all. In Ellis's "Specimens of the early English Poets," 5th edition, 1845, among the pieces credited to Fulke Greville (Lord Brooke) is a "Song," with these words in brackets:

"To be found in 'England's Helicon,' where it is signed Ignoto."

On turning to the edition of 1614 we find that song entitled "Another, of his Cynthia." It is preceded by two, evidently by the same pen, entitled, "To his Flocks," and "To his Love" and is followed by still "Another to his Cynthia." But all these are anonymous

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in the edition of 1614, and the editor appends to the last one the following remark:

"These three [or four?] ditties were taken out of Maister John Dowland's Book of Tableture for the Lute. The authors' names not there set down, and therefore left to their owners."

But it happens that the four ditties are all credited to "Ignoto" in the Table of Contents, prepared by the _other editor_, so that in the edition of 1614 "Ignoto" has twenty pieces, besides the one assigned to Marlowe.

With all this confusion what are we to believe in regard to "Ignoto"? Was he sometimes Raleigh, sometimes Barnfield, sometimes Dyer, sometimes Greville,

and sometimes Shakspere, or some one else? Or was he a single person who "loved better to be a poet than to be counted so" and who affected to hoodwink the above-named Greville by writing to him in 1596: "For poets I can commend none, being resolved to be ever a stranger to them"?

And here let us note a bit of internal evidence that Bacon wrote the little poem in praise of the "Faery Queen" signed "Ignoto." One couplet of it is as follows:

"For when men know the goodness of the wine, 'Tis needless for the host to have a sign."

No. 517 of Bacon's "Promus of Formularies and Elegancies" is this:

"Good wine needs no bush."

The word "bush" as applied to wine is thus defined by Webster:

"branch of ivy (as sacred to Bacchus) hung out at vintners' doors, or as a tavern sign; hence a tavern sign, or the tavern itself."

"'If it be true that good wine needs no bush, 'tis true that a good play needs no epilogue.'" Shak.[As You Like It.]

We leave the reader to put this and that together argument or comment is superfluous.

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AS THE CONCEALED POET IGNOTO

And now what shall we say in regard to Marlowe's ostensible authorship of a popular song, which was attributed to Shakspere in 1599? Is it not presumable that "Ignoto," who wrote the "Nymph's Reply," and followed it with "Another of the same nature made since" in imitation of the song subscribed "Chr. Marlowe"--is it not probable that "Ignoto" ascribed his own original song to Marlowe?

Marlowe was buried June 1, 1593. In the same year Shakspere's name first appeared in print as an author. And now among the startling revelations hitherto hidden in the Folio of 1623, but made known through Bacon's cipher discovered by the Hon. Ignatius Donnelly, is this sentence:

"Ever since Marlowe was killed Shakspere has been my mask."

Another Poem by Bacon in 1590.

The 33d anniversary of Elizabeth's coronation was celebrated November 17, 1590. Sir Henry Lea, the Queen's champion and master of the armory, who had conducted the exercises from the beginning, appeared for the last time, and, after the customary performances, resigned his office to the Earl of Cumberland, whereupon the celebrated vocalist, Mr. Hales, a servant of her Majesty, pronounced and sung the following verses, personating the aged man-at-arms:

"My golden locks hath time to silver turned, (O Time too swift, and swiftness never ceasing!) My youth 'gainst age, and age at youth hath spurned, But spurned in vain; youth waneth, by increasing. Beauty and strength, and youth flowers fading been, Duty, faith, love, are roots and ever green.

"My helmet now shall make a hive for bees, And lovers' songs shall turn to holy psalms; A man-at-arms must now stand on his knees, And feed on prayers that are old age's alms.

And so from court to cottage I depart; My saint is sure of my unspotted heart. "And when I sadly sit in lonely cell, I'll teach my swains this carol for a song: 'Blest be the hearts that wish my Sovereign well, Curst be the souls that think to do her wrong.'

Goddess! vouchsafe this aged man his right, To be your beadsman now that Was your knight."

Parallels are found in Bacon and Shakspere with almost every sentiment and expression in these lines. (See Mrs. Pott's "Promus," p. 528.)

The verses were published anonymously in Dowland's "First Book of Songs," 1600, and again in 1844; both times with the pronouns changed from the first to the third person--e. g., "His golden locks," etc. In the "Works of George Peele," 1828, they are credited to that poet, but the only evidence adduced of his authorship is the fact that he, as an eye-witness, wrote a poetic description of the celebration in 1590. Mrs. Pott is doubtless right in claiming for Bacon the authorship, and is only mistaken in supposing that the person to whom the verses were intended to apply was Lord Burleigh, who about that time, on account of the loss of his wife, had temporarily withdrawn from court.

BACON AND SHAKSPERE A CHRONOGRAPH

1. If the Parliament met November 23, 1584, as Mr. Spedding distinctly says, then Bacon was not yet twenty-four.

An ideal tableau of the youthful statesman is gaily depicted by Wm. Hepworth Dixon, in his "Personal History of Lord Bacon:"

"How he appears in outward guise and aspect among these courtly and martial contemporaries the miniature of Hilyard helps us to conceive. Slight in build, rosy and round in fleshy dight in a sumptuous suit, the head well-set, erect, and framed in a thick starched fence of frill; a bloom of study and travel on the fat, girlish face, which looks far younger than his years; the hat and feather tossed aside from the white brow, over which, crisps and curls a mane of dark, soft hair; an English nose, firm, open, straight; a mouth delicate and small--a lady's or jester's mouth--a thousand pranks and humors, quibbles, whims and laughters lurking in its twinkling, tremulous lines;--such is Francis Bacon at the age of twenty-four."

Bearing in mind that Bacon is three years and three months older than Shakspere, we will now parallel their lives by successive years.

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A CHRONOGRAPHIC PARALLEL

A. D. 1585. Bacon at 24, in a letter to the Queen's principal secretary, Sir Francis Walsingham, urges his some time pending suit, which is to determine his "course of practice"--supposed to mean a shortening of the five years' probation required to become a pleader.

He writes an essay entitled "Greatest Birth of Time," foreshadowing his scientific works.

His mother in her zeal for the Nonconformists urges their cause in person before Lord Treasurer Burleigh, and follows it by a letter to the same in which she says:

"I confess as one that hath found mercy, that I have profited more in the inward feeling knowledge of God his holy will, though but in small measure, by an ordinary preaching within these seven or eight years, than I did by hearing odd sermons at Paul's well nigh twenty years together."

Shakspere at 21 is still living at Stratford, the father of three children--two of them twins. His father is said to have been a butcher as well as a dealer in wool; and gossiping John Aubrey says he was told by some of the neighbors that when the boy William "kill'd a calfe, he wold doe it in a high style, and make a speeche."

Mr. Richard Grant White guesses that William may have gone to London this year or the next.

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A. D. 1586. Bacon at 25 writes a letter, May 6th, to Lord Treasurer Burleigh, his uncle, saying:

"I find in my simple observation that they which live as it were _in umbra_ and not in public or frequent action, how moderately and modestly soever they behave themselves, yet _laborant inmdia_. I find also that such persons as are of nature bashful (as myself is,) whereby they want that plausible familiarity which others have, are often mistaken for proud. But once I know well, and I most humbly beseech your Lordship to believe that arrogancy and overweening is so far from my nature, as, if I think well of myself in anything, it is in this, that I am free from that vice."

He is again elected to Parliament. The conspirators who attempted to liberate Mary of Scotland have been tried, condemned, and sentenced. The case is brought before the Parliament. Bacon is one of the speakers in "the Great Cause," and one of the committees to whom it is referred.

Shakspere at 22 is probably still at Stratford, though Mr. White presumes he has become connected with the London stage this year, or perhaps a little later.

[To be continued to the end of both lives, making a book of 300 pages or more, including this pamphlet as an appendix, with important additions. All the essential facts of Lord Bacon's life will be presented, whereby his secret authorship will be more abundantly proved, and his moral character vindicated against the aspersions of 260 years.]

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