which may be thought superfluous or irrelevant; or, if haply out of too great a love of the subject the temptation has been yielded to of straining a point too far-of imagining resemblances which do not exist, unskilfully endeavouring to give to airy thoughts a local habitation and a name which their author never contemplated—it is hoped that the error will be attributed to its proper cause, and that the value of the material may not be discredited by the weakness of the workman.

Folios 110 and 111 are very curious and interesting, not only because nearly every entry in them can be traced into the plays, but because they present us with another notable illustration of the wonderful patience and attention which Bacon bestowed upon every particular of which he meant to treat.

Those who fondly imagine that genius is heavenborn,' in the sense that it can achieve greatness with little of the labour or preparation which is required by smaller minds in the accomplishment of their smaller ends, would do well to ponder the contents of these manuscripts, if only for the purpose of realising how the great Bacon practised what he in many places inculcates, that in order to master a subject we must study it in its details rather than in its general features; that the habit of taking notes is of vast assistance to the memory and to the invention; that writing makes the exact man; and that in order to produce aphorisms a man must draw his figures and allusions from the centre of the sciences.'

Bacon attributes the neglect or failure of writers to master the science of the human will to that rock whereon so many of the sciences have split-viz., the aversion that writers have to treat of trite and vulgar matters, which are neither subtle enough for dispute, nor eminent enough for ornament.' Therefore,' he says, feeling himself marked out by nature to be the architect of philosophy and the sciences, I have submitted to become a common workman and a labourer, there being

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many mean things necessary to the erection of the structure, which others out of a natural disdain refused to attend to.' (Advt. L. vii. 1.)

In these folios we certainly have a peep at him in his workshop, and it is interesting to see how he handled the vulgar and trite matters upon which he laboured.

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Folio 110 is headed 'Play.' In it Bacon is found meditating upon all kinds of recreation,' and modes of 'putting away melancholy,' and of the art of forgetting.' The first note in the series seems to refer to 'poesy' or the theatre, since the latter half of it appears in the essay Of Truth in this connection. The entry (1166) is as follows:

The sin against the Holy Ghost-termed in zeal by the old fathers.

In the essay Of Truth there is this passage:

One of the fathers, in great severity, called poesy vinum dæmonum (devil's wine), because it filleth the imagination; and yet it is with the shadow of a lie. ;

It does not appear from the essay to what the first part of the sentence refers. It may be that Bacon had heard poetry and play-acting denounced as a sin against the Holy Ghost,' for we all know the great severity' with which they were spoken of by members of the Puritan party in those days. Actors, poetasters, and playwrights were classed by Coke himself with the most degraded and profane persons; professional actors were forbidden the rites of Christian burial; and Lady Anne Bacon (Francis Bacon's mother) speaks more than once in her letters of the sinfulness of masking and mumming, praying that it may not be accounted a sin that she permits such doings in her house at Christmas.

This entry, when compared with the passage where it is introduced in the essay, leads to the discovery of further analogies between the thoughts and expressions of Bacon and those which are exhibited in the plays: 'Poesy is but

the shadow of a lie.' This figure, which is variously reproduced by Bacon, is as frequently echoed by Shakespeare, and by both it is connected with remarks about dramatic poetry being 'feigned history' or 'feigned chronicles,' and that the truer the poetry the more it is 'feigned.' Some references have been appended to the note (1166) to assist readers who may desire to prosecute further this comparison of ideas. The subject ramifies in many directions, and would lead to too great a diversion if it were pursued in this place. It has been elsewhere minutely investigated.

The next entry in folio 110 is 'Cause of Quarrels.' Here it will be observed that Bacon in his essay Of Travel points out four main causes of quarrels-they are commonly for mistresses, healths, place, and words.'

These are the four things to which quarrels are especially referred in the plays. It may indeed be asserted that no serious quarrel is there presented to us which has not its origin in a discussion about a mistress, or in drinking 'healths' until the drinkers become heated and quarrelsome, or in jealousies and rivalries about 'place,' or in mutual recrimination and bandying of 'words.'

Let it also be observed that in this pithy essay, where no superfluous word is introduced, Bacon says, 'For quarrels, they are with care and discretion to be avoided,' a sentiment which is repeated at greater length (but with the use of the distinctive words in Bacon's phrase) in Much Ado, ii. 3, 190:

D. Pedro. . . . In the managing of quarrels you may say he is wise; for either he avoids them with great discretion, or undertakes them with a most Christian fear.

The same subject is touched upon in Bacon's letters of advice to Rutland,' as well as in the advice of Polonius to his son, ‘Beware of entrance to a quarrel,' and in other

The first and third of these letters purport to be written by the Earl of Essex, but Mr. Spedding considered it more probable that they were all written by Bacon. (See Spedding, Works, v. 4-20.)

places in the plays, where, as has been said, the causes of quarrels are traced, as Bacon traced them, to mistresses, healths, place, and words.

The rest of note 1167 may be compared with the essay Of Expense and with the places which have been marked for reference to the plays. Then comes a note, which is repeated three times in the Promus and as often in the plays—'Well to forget.' This thought, as will be presently seen, attains its full growth in Romeo and Juliet, but in the present case it seems to be connected with a train of thoughts regarding the necessity of recreation and of putting off melancholy and malas curas.'

Bacon here seems to be considering the effect of mind upon body and of body upon mind, subjects which he considers in much detail in the Sylva Sylvarum. The results of his cogitations appear in the chapter on the knowledge of the human body in the Advancement of Learning, iv. 2, and in the brief remarks on the value of exercise in the essay of the Regimen of Health.

As will be seen, there is not an item in these notes which has not a direct reference to some point which is enlarged upon in the plays, and the number of figures and reflections in connection with matters which are the subjects of these notes is almost beyond calculation.

The advantages of games of chance considered as pastimes, or as a means of teaching the arts of discretion and dissimulation, or how to play a losing game-these subjects, both in the notes and in the plays, diverge into abstractions, and to points which might receive figurative application.

Elsewhere there has been occasion to point out that a curious relation exists between the sports and various exercises alluded to in the plays, and those which Bacon specifies as necessary or desirable for the development of manly beauty, strength, and powers of body. In Troilus and Cressida, i. 2, there is a description of manly perfection of mind and body which will probably strike other

students of Bacon as being characteristic of his way of thinking and of his expression :

Pan. I had rather be such a man as Troilus, than Agamemnon and all Greece.

Cres. There is amongst the Greeks Achilles, a better man than

Troilus.

Pan. Achilles! a drayman, a porter, a very camel.

Cres. Well, well.

Pan. Well, well? Why, have you any discretion? Have you any eyes? Do you know what a man is? Is not birth, beauty, good shape, discourse, manhood, learning, gentleness, virtue, youth, liberality, and such like, the salt and spice that season a

man?

Folio 111, the group of notes which now call for consideration is perhaps the one most deserving of it on account of the strong support it affords to a reasonable belief that these Promus notes were written by the same hand as that which penned Romeo and Juliet. The folio is one which Mr. Spedding describes as containing 'forms of morning and evening salutation;' and indeed it does appear-surprising as this may seem to contain notes for forms of salutation until then unused in England, but now so common that it is hard to realise that they were, so far as can be ascertained, unknown here three hundred years ago. The forms Good-morrow,' 'Good-night,' 'Bon-jour,' now seem so commonplace that without these notes to draw our attention to them it would probably not strike anyone that they were new in the time of Shakespeare, still less that they were of Bacon's introduction. Yet this appears to be the case. Inquiries have been instituted in many quarters, and the dramatic literature previous to and contemporary with Shakespeare has been carefully gone through; but although these and other forms of expression noted in folio 111 are introduced into almost every play of Shakespeare, they certainly were not in common use until many years after the publication of these plays.

There are said to be at this day districts in the