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being peculiar to Shakespeare, and introduced them into this play, although he uses them nowhere else. In All for Love we find eight or ten turns of expression, as many similes and metaphors, and about a dozen other points, which are the subjects of entries in the Promus.

The same thing is met with in the works of Nicholas Rowe, a very dull writer, in whose plays, with the one exception which is to be noticed, no trace of anything Baconian is to be found.

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The exception is the tragedy of Jane Shore, written in imitation of Shakespeare's stile.' Here are found about ten metaphors or figures of speech which are noted in the Promus; as many reflections on counsel, grief, the rigour of the law, jealousy; on the life of Courts and of poor men's hours; of the owl as a bird of ill omen; avoid,' 'avant,' and 'done the deed '--expressions which there is reason to believe find their originals in Latin words in the Promus. They have been found nowhere else (excepting avoid or avaunt' in Ben Jonson). It is to be seen, however, that whereas Dryden adopted Bacon's peculiar turns of expression and used his own ideas, Rowe adopts Bacon's ideas and fails to perceive how much of Shakespeare's stile' was dependent upon the use of peculiar forms of expression.

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DOUBTFUL PLAYS AND SCENES, &c.

In the poems and plays of Thomas Kyd there are, as a rule, no Baconianisms or Promus notes. But in one play, the Spanish Student, or Hieronimo, there is a scene in which there are about twenty-five Baconianisms. On seeking for some account of this play the following remarks were found in Charles Lamb's English Dramatists:'These scenes, which are the very salt of the old play (which without them is but a caput mortuum, such another piece of flatness as Locrine), Hawkins, in his

The Two Noble Kinsmen and Edward III. have been discussed at

page 74.

republication of this tragedy, has thrust out of the text into the notes, as omitted in the second edition, printed for Ed. Allde, amended of such gross blunders as passed in the first,' and thinks them to have been foisted in by the players. A late discovery at Dulwich College has ascertained that two sundry payments were made to Ben Jonson by the theatre for furnishing additions to Hieronimo. (See last edition of Shakespeare, by Reed.) There is nothing in the undoubted plays of Jonson which would authorise us to suppose that he could have supplied the scenes in question. I should suspect the agency of some more potent spirit. Webster might have furnished them.' No Promus notes have been traced in any of Webster's acknowledged works.

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Nahum Tate, the author of the Paraphrases of the Psalms, is one of the dullest of play-wrights. There is no trace of a Promus note in any of his plays but two, and these two are full of them.

Injured Love is described as being by N. Tate, the author of the tragedy known as King Lear. It contains about thirty-two Promus notes and many Baconian ideas.

The Island Princess, also attributed to Tate, has at least thirty-seven Promus notes, and many Baconian ideas.

The Miser, published in 1691, and attributed to Shadwell, is another instance of a solitary play (amongst many by the same author) found to contain at least twenty-four Baconian expressions, some of these repeated three or four, or even so many as ten times. One of these expressions is really,' which occurs three times in this play, but nowhere else, excepting in Hamlet, until perhaps a hundred years later.

Sir Thomas More is the name of a play by an unknown author. It bears strong traces of the same master-hand which is seen in the former pieces, and contains many allusions to Promus notes, and many of the small turns of expression which the present writer holds to be tests of Baconian authorship. There are in it one or two allusions

to Promus notes, which have been found nowhere else, and it appears that some of the passages which attracted special attention from their resemblance in thought and expression to passages in Shakespeare inclined able critics to believe (when first this play was discovered and reprinted by the Shakespeare Society') that it was by Shakespeare himself. That idea was rejected, seemingly upon slight grounds, by later critics. The present writer, totally unaware of any previous controversy on the subject, picked out this play from amongst many others by unknown authors, as being full of Baconisms of various kinds, and thickly besprinkled with characteristic expressions which are noted in the Promus.

Last, not least, it is desired that capable critics may be drawn to give especial attention to four plays which are said to have for their author Sir Thomas Heywood, a voluminous writer, whose works are attributed to the years between 1599 and 1656.

Twenty-seven works will be found in the list attached. to his name in the Appendix, and it is to the last four of these works that attention is requested. Two of these plays concern events in the reign of Edward IV.; the other two relate (1st part) the imprisonment of Elizabeth by Mary; and (2nd part) the victory over the Spanish Armada, and other events which glorified the reign of Elizabeth. These four plays only, of all that have been studied, whether by Sir T. Heywood alone, or by him and Rowley together, contain an abundance of Promus notes, chiefly from certain particular folios-namely, from the sheets containing turns of expression, from the English proverbs, and from folio 111-Morning and Evening Salutations,' &c. There are upwards of 250 such allusions to Promus notes in the four plays, besides many Baconisms, and several passages which remind one so strongly of well-known passages in Shakespeare that it seems astonishing that these plays should not have been claimed

for Shakespeare, to fill up the series of historical plays which pass under his name.

It is no part of the present writer's plan to enter upon any discussion of these pieces; but it is hoped that these remarks may induce others more competent to study the plays and to compare them closely with the Promus and with Shakespeare.

There is one play, The Misfortunes of Arthur (1587), in the production of which there can be no doubt that Francis Bacon had a share. In the old record of this play he is only accredited with having contributed the 'dumb shows'; but in certain passages and scenes there appear the same peculiarities of expression and thought as have been found to connect the Shakespeare' plays with entries in the Promus, and it seems easy to distinguish the pages which have been illuminated and beautified by the hand of Bacon, if, indeed, he did not altogether write them. At Appendix H are some extracts from Mr. Collier's account of this early play, and notes of the chief passages in which Bacon's touch seems discernible. In the same appendix will be found a letter from Bacon to Lord Burghley respecting a masque which he proposes to assist in getting up at Gray's Inn. With positive evidence before us that in the years 1587 and 1588 Bacon was engaged in theatrical enterprises, it should not be thought impossible that such plays and masques were but the seeds and weak beginnings' of the mighty series of works which began to appear, according to Dr. Delius, before 1591,' and which followed each other in rapid succession until about 1615, when Bacon's appointment as Attorney-General placed him beyond the necessity of writing for money, whilst it deprived him of the leisure hours which he had previously devoted to those unnamed works, the works of his recreation.'

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PROMU S.

Folio 83.

1. Ingenuous honesty, and yet with opposition and strength.

2. Corni contra croci. Good means against badd, hornes to crosses.

This it is that makes me bridle passion,

And bear with mildness my misfortune's cross. (3 H. VI. iv. 4.)
I have given way unto this cross 1 of fortune. (M. Ado, iv. 1.)
We must do good against evil. (All's W. ii. 5.)

Fie, Cousin Percy! how you cross my father
He holds your temper in a high respect,
And curbs himself even of his natural scope

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When you do cross his humour. (1 Hen. IV. iii. 2.)
I love not to be crossed.

He speaks the mere contrary. Crosses love not him.

(Thirty times.)

(L. L. L. i. 2.)

3. In circuitu ambulant impii-honest by antiperistasis.-Ps. xii. 9. (The ungodly walk (around) on every side.)

Cold or hot per antiperistasin that is, invironing by contraries; it was said. . . . that an honest man in these days must be honest per antiperistasin. (See Col. of Good and Evil, vii.)

I'll devise some honest slanders.
Its. . . . fery honest knaveries.

(See No. 130.)

(M. Ado. iii. 1.)
(Mer. Wiv. iv. 4.)

1 Cross in Collier's text.

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