Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches

Baconian Essays

Page 17 line 12 _for_ “hat” _read_ “that.” ” 19 line 13 from bottom _for_ “Spain” read “Spa in.” ” 38 line 7 ” ” _for_ “Magwell” read “Mugwell.” ” 169 line 13 ” ” _for_ “swet” read “sweet.” ” 193 line 10 from bottom _for_ “tilt-hard” read “tilt-yard.”

Chapters

1. Part 1

Page 17 line 12 _for_ “hat” _read_ “that.” ” 19 line 13 from bottom _for_ “Spain” read “Spa in.” ” 38 line 7 ” ” _for_ “Magwell” read “Mugwell.” ” 169 line 13 ” ” _for_ “swet” r...

2. Part 2

“Simple common sense.” Aye, but when I spoke not long ago to a well-known writer, who is a Stratfordian _enragé_, of “common sense” in this matter, what was his reply? “_Oh, dam...

3. Part 3

SIR,--In an article under the above heading in the October number of the _Quarterly Review_, Mr. C. R. Haines writes (p. 229): “There cannot be the smallest doubt that Shakespea...

4. Part 4

Jonson’s yearning to see Shakespeare once more “upon the bankes of Thames” is suddenly arrested by a vision. Turning his poetic eye upwards and catching sight of the constellati...

5. Part 5

These facts seem to have been well known to Mr. Smithson, for not only does he quote John Chamberlain’s letter in his _Nineteenth Century_ article, where he expresses the opinio...

6. Part 6

The more vulnerable points of this tentative theory{20} of Bacon’s relation to poetry seem to be three. First, Bacon’s final perseverence in ignoring his hypothetical offspring....

7. Part 7

This emphatic disclaimer of any intention to draw envy, ill-will, discredit, on the august name Shakespeare, had a deep meaning, or Jonson would not have given it such prominenc...

8. Part 8

In other words, the _Novum Organum_, the potent _New Instrument_ that was to enlarge man’s dominion over every province of Nature, was Bacon’s chief solace for an unparalleled r...

9. Part 9

The external evidence that Bacon was essentially a poet is a theme so large that only a portion of it can be given here. In 1626, the year of Bacon’s death, John Haviland printe...

10. Part 10

Now there is no evidence fit to be trusted that Shakspere, or, to give him the title he coveted, Mr. William Shakspere of Stratford-upon-Avon, gentleman, was ever a lover of boo...

11. Part 11

But how far is it true, as Professor Dowden alleges it to be, that “Bright in his _Melancholy_ seems almost to anticipate the theory of Bacon?” The book is a scarce one. There i...

12. Part 12

Judge Webb, while denying the allegation that “all that is proper to Shakespeare and to Bacon was the common knowledge or common error of the time,” writes as follows: “Whatever...

13. Part 13

Now as to the date of these writings, Mr. Spedding states that he could find nothing, either in the “scribblings” or in what remains of the book itself, to indicate a date later...

14. Part 14

“If my Fate would permit me to live according to my Wishes I would flie over into _England_, that I might behold whatsoever remaineth, in your cabinet of the _Verulamian_ Workma...

15. Part 15

See the _Sunday Times_, August 28, 1921. With reference to the 160 new lines added in the folio version of _Othello_ and which “cannot be attributed to any other hand but the au...

16. Part 16

[116] Mr. Begley suggests (p. 17) that the Cynic’s helmet is an allusion to the Knights of the Helmet, of whom we read in the _Gesta Grayorum_, and, as he writes, we know that B...