Lyly, Spenser, Raleigh, Marlowe, Peele, Greene, Marston, Ben Jonson, Chapman, Middleton, Davenant, Davis, Heywood, &c.—have been carefully read and noted, so that the oversights which may have occurred in the reading may in all probability be balanced by an equal number in the reading of Shakespeare.

An attempt has been made to ascertain the amount of use made of the Promus notes in Shakespeare. The result is shown in a table where the notes are (so far as feasible) sorted into six classes, in order to give some idea of the proportion found in each play, and of the manner in which the total number rises and falls between the first play and the latest. The dates of Dr. Delius are taken as a basis for the arrangement of the plays.

It will be observed that The Com. of Errors has the smallest total; next the Tw. G. Verona, Mid. N. Dream, Pericles, and the Tempest. The largest total occurs in Lear, Hamlet, and Othello.

In these calculations expressions are counted, or are supposed to be counted, each time they occur. Hence in the earlier plays, where the same notes are frequently repeated, the total is larger than it would otherwise be. In the later plays we find a much greater variety of language and a more extended use of Promus notes, together with less repetition.

To return to the list of authors. It includes 328 known authors of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, and upwards of 5,300 of their works. A 'col

1 See table at the end of Appendix. It is not presumed that the table can be absolutely correct, the difficulty of classifying the references, and the doubtful nature of some, rendering it almost an impossibility to attain absolute accuracy. But the lists have been made three times over at intervals of time, and although improved acquaintance with the notes has caused a corresponding increase of the numbers in each column, yet the proportion of allusions assigned to each play has not been altered by the repeated process of calculation. It is therefore hoped that if the table be not absolutely correct, it must, at least, be approximately so, and that it may be held to afford evidence of a relation between the notes as a whole and the plays as a whole.

lection' of poems has been counted as ten, excepting in cases where each is numbered.

There are also 118 pieces, chiefly mysteries and plays by unknown authors.

An additional list of seventy-five authors of the eighteenth century has been made, but the 894 plays written by them have been found to be so totally unproductive, that it is not thought worth while to do more than enumerate them. The same must be said of sixtythree dramas which form a collection from the early part of the nineteenth century. Shakespearianisms or Baconisms seem to have disappeared from about the middle of the seventeenth to the early part of the nineteenth century.

TURNS OF EXPRESSION.

There are about 200 English turns of expression entered in the Promus. Of these only seventeen have been discovered in any works written between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, excepting in the prose works of Bacon and in the plays.

The seventeen expressions which are found rarely used in the works of about eighteen authors are for the most part still used in common conversation; for instance: Is it possible?' Believe me,' 'What else?'Nothing less,' 'Your reason?' 'What's the matter?' The authors who adopted them, or rather who used them perhaps two or three times, were men who we know were for the most part acquainted with Bacon, and some of them interested in and mixed up with his literary pursuits. Such were Sir Thomas Heywood, Sir John Davis, Beaumont and Fletcher, and Ben Jonson. No other author of Bacon's time, nor for many years later, adopts so many of Bacon's turns of expression as does Ben Jonson,' but even he only uses ten out of the 200, and, for the most part, even these ten

1 See, for a qualification of this remark, page 86, on 'Plays professedly written in Shakespeare's style.'

expressions are to be found but once or twice apiece, and only in eleven out of his numerous pieces. The largest number of such expressions-seven-occurs in Ben Jonson's first play, Every Man in his Humour, 1598. They gradually decrease in number in the following plays, and have not been discovered in works written later than 1616, although Ben Johnson continued to write until 1632.

PROVERBS.

It may be broadly asserted that neither the English, French, Italian, Spanish, nor Latin proverbs which are noted in the Promus and quoted in Shakespeare are found in other literature of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries.

Lyly has perhaps five or six English proverbs in the whole of his works which are to be found amongst the (?) 200 English proverbs in the Promus: All is not gold,' 'It is a wily mouse,' 'No smoke without fire,' 'Moonshine in the water,' A long harvest for a little corn.'

Lodge uses three proverbs: Lettise for your lips,' 'All is not gold,' and ‘Better be envied than pitied.' Greene, in his History of Friar Bacon, has 'Up early, and never the nearer.'

If Ben Jonson has any, they have escaped notice.

In other writings, English proverbs traceable to the Promus, or rather to Heywood's collection of proverbs and epigrams, are very few and far between.

SIMILES AND METAPHORS.

The almost complete absence of Promus and Shakespearian similes and figures of speech from all ordinary literature is so striking that the occurrence of a single instance here and there instantly attracts the eye.

From Lyly Bacon probably derived 'watery impressions,' the only English metaphor in the Promus which has been traced in any earlier work.

If A disease has certen traces' in the Promus refers

to the disease of love, the figure may also be borrowed from Lyly, Sapho and Phao, iii. 3, in which the 'special marks' or signs by which a lover may be recognised, are enumerated somewhat after the manner in which they are described by Speed in the Two Gentlemen of Verona, ii. 1, 12-40, and in other places.

LATIN QUOTATIONS.

None of the texts from the Bible, none of the proverbs from Erasmus, and only three or four of the large number of Latin quotations from the classics which are entered in the Promus have been traced in any of the works which have been read with a view to this question. In the prologue to Epicone, 1609, Ben Jonson says: 'I had rather please my guests than my cooks,' and this quotation is alluded to by other writers.

Allusions to Arion, Hercules, Hylas, Penelope, and Proteus are of course to be met with, but nothing has been found which seems have direct relation to any of the passages noted by Bacon. In Lyly's Euphues there is Quæ supra nos nihil ad nos, which forms a note in the Promus.

SALUTATIONS-MORNING AND EVENING.

It is certain that the habit of using forms of morning. and evening salutation was not introduced into England prior to the date of Bacon's notes, 1594. The only use of the words 'good-morrow' and 'good-night' which has been discovered before that date is in the titles of two of Gascoigne's short poems-Gascoigne's Good-Morrow, Gascoigne's Good-Night-in edition printed 1587. These pieces are morning and evening hymns, and the expressions are nowhere used as salutations in Gascoigne's writings.

The next instance (excepting Shakespeare) where' goodmorrow' appears, is in Philip Stubb's Anatomy of Abuse, 1597, where two friends, one lately returned from his

travels, proceed to discuss the abuses and fopperies of the age. The greeting is in precisely the same words as those used by Jaquenetta to Holofernes in Love's L. L. iv. 2: 'God give you good-morrow, master person.' The same occurs in Romeo and Juliet, ii. 4.

Beaumont and Fletcher in upwards of forty plays use good-morrow' five times, 'good-day' once, 'good-night' four times, good even' once.

Henceforward the use of these expressions, especially 'good-morrow,' seems never to have entirely died out, but they were by no means common, and were as often as not used as forms of dismissal or good-bye.' 'Good-night' is very rare; it has been found only three or four times between Fletcher's last use of it, in Monsieur Thomas, and the beginning of the nineteenth century.

In Shakespeare, on the other hand, morning and evening salutations are used, as has been already stated, about 250 times.

PLAYS PROFESSEDLY WRITTEN IN SHAKESPEARE'S

STYLE.

Dryden's works are, as a rule, peculiarly devoid of expressions noted by Bacon, although three or four had become tolerably common at the time that Dryden wrote. Is it possible?' Believe me,' 'Well' (as a conclusion), and 'What else?' were amongst the commonest of such forms. Yet Dryden uses none of these. "Good-morrow' once in Amboyna, and Good-night' once in The Assignation, are the only expressions which seem to be derived from the Promus.

But there is one exception to this rule. In All for Love (1678) we are startled by suddenly coming upon a number of expressions and ideas which are the subjects of Promus notes. There are at least forty of these, and some of them are repeated. On turning to find some account of this play we discover that it is written in Shakespeare's stile.' Dryden therefore observed certain expressions as