dissimulation did not give edge to the fears of an entente with the ogre of the Escurial.

Yet this epoch had its heroes - Drake, who through fire and blood encompassed the world; Gilbert, who sang his swan song amid tempest and gloom, triumphant in the thought that heaven was as near him as in his beloved Devonshire; Frobisher, who drove his frail keel through the ice-locked portals of Boreal seas; and scores of others, who, on sea and land, proved the invincible courage of the English heart. Those in power, however, paid them scant heed, and they played their great rôles, and made their exits, leaving no deep impress upon the minds of their contemporaries, except, perhaps, Drake, who struck Spain such a staggering blow that it stirred the enthusiasm of his phlegmatic countrymen, though his stingy sovereign haggled over its cost.

However imperfect and inadequate this outline of a remarkable epoch, it seems beyond credence that it held a capability of reformation; yet it is true that during its existence a remarkable transformation took place in the thought and expression of the English mind. The language of Tudor England, defiled by the barbarisms of a rude age, began to purge itself of its crudities, and to enrich its vocabulary with new vehicles of thought, giving it flexibility, and enlarging its scope of expression. To realize what was accomplished within the brief period we have named, it will be suggestive to compare the King James version of one of the psalms, or Bacon's "New Atlantis," with this excerpt from the dedication of a poem to Lord Wilton in 1576, by George Gascoigne, one of the foremost literary men of his day:

I haue loytered (my lorde) I confesse, I haue lien streaking me (like a lubber) when the sunne did shine, and now striue al in vaine to loade the carte when it raineth. I regarded not my comelynes in the May-moone of my yvthe, and yet now I stand prinking me in the glasse when the crowes feete is growen vnder mine eie.

Or this from a letter of Queen Elizabeth in 1594:

What danger it bredes a king to glorifie to hie and to soudanly a boy of yeres and counduict, whos untimely age for discretion. bredes rasche consent to undesent actions. Suche speke or the way, and attempt or the considar. The waight of a kingly state is of more poix than the shalownis of a rasche yonge mans hed can waigh, therfor I trust that the causeles zele that you have borne the hed of this presumption shal rather cary you to extirpe so ingratius a roote, in finding so sowre fruite to springe of your many favors ivel-acquited, rather than to suffer your goodnis to be abused with his many skusis for coulors of his good menings.1

We may well inquire how this change was inaugurated and carried to a successful issue. It could not have sprung up and come to fruition by dissociated individual effort. A presiding genius was required to foster and direct its growth. Across the Channel it was Ronsard, who, designing to regenerate the language of France, and perpetuate it in his own literary productions, associated with himself others whom he encouraged to like effort. Who in England could have undertaken this great work? What was its beginning? If we attune our ear to distinguish amid the prevailing dissonance its primal note, we shall unmistakably trace it to the oaten pipe of the gentle Colin, whose haunting melody holds our attention, and, following these strains with awakening sense, we shall hear them reëchoed until they culminate in that symphony of the greatest master of poetic numbers, the author of "Lucrece," of "Hamlet," and of the "Sonnets."

When, however, we seek the inspired mortals, whom we are told caught the sweet strains of the artless Shepherd, and came singing down the shining steeps of Olympus with a divine message to ennoble their fellowmen, we find them in dens of infamy, the tippling-shop, the gambling-hell, the brothel, and are moved to exclaim,- Such a paradox is monstrous; 1 Letters of Queen Elizabeth and King James VI, p. 109. Bruce, London, 1849.

God does not ordain the vilest among men to be his messengers of peace and enlightenment to mankind:-and, certainly, the men to whom our pretentious guides have introduced us were among the vilest of their kind. No wonder the world is awakening to the necessity of a higher criticism than that with which it has hitherto been cloyed, and turning to one incomparable_genius, who, voicing the primal strains of the Renaissance in Tudor England, bore them on with everswelling majesty to the close of the grand symphony which ended with his life. This great genius I hope to show was Francis Bacon, Baron Verulam, Viscount St. Albans. Time was when I should have dismissed this thesis with impatience, but I am hoping that my readers will weigh the evidence I adduce before condemning me as a mere theorist.

It will be objected at the outset that Bacon could not have written that great body of philosophy, the "Shakespeare" Works, and others to which we have alluded, and have had any time left to perform his political duties, to say nothing of the common affairs of life. To answer this I cite his habit of utilizing his time, even its moments. Those intimately associated with him witness to this. Says Rawley: "He would ever interlace a moderate relaxation of his mind with his studies, as walking or taking the air abroad in his coach, or some other befitting recreation."1

Böener and Bushell, both his amanuenses, give like testimony. His great philosophical works were written in an incomparably short space of time, while he was in great mental distress. Says Rawley: "The last five years of his life — he employed wholly in contemplation and study in which time he composed the greatest part of his books and writings, both in English and Latin.” 2

His public duties, apparently uncongenial, occupied but a small portion of his time, so that the much longer time which this man of ceaseless activity had to devote to more congenial 1 Rawley's Life, p. 48. 2 Ibid., p. 43.

pursuits becomes an argument in favor of his occupation in other than philosophical fields of labor. Any one who will carefully study his various Lives will be convinced that he had ample time to produce all the works which have been ascribed to him, not excepting the poems and plays known as the "Shakespeare" Works. If it were necessary I could cite many examples of voluminous authorship. For a single instance, Thomas Heywood, a contemporary, claimed to be the author of two hundred plays besides much other literary work. There are thirty-six in the Folio.

That it was a common custom for authors to use the names or initials of others on their productions cannot be questioned. Books, too, were often falsely dated. The author of "The Arte of English Poesie," published in 1589, says: "I know very many notable Gentlemen in the Court that have written. commendably, and suppressed it agayne, or els suffred it to be publisht without their owne names to it, as if it were a discredit for a Gentleman to seeme learned, and to shew himself amorous of any learned Art."

Henry Cuffe, a scholar of distinction, not wishing to use his own name on a manuscript, sent it to a correspondent to ask Greville to permit him to publish it with his initials, and told his correspondent in case of refusal to print it with the initials R. B., which, he said, “some no doubt will interpret to be Beale."

"The Historie of the Life and Death of Mary Stuart Queene of Scotland" was published in 1624, and the dedication bore the name of the supposed author, Wil Stranguage. In 1636, in a second edition, the same dedication bore the name W. Udall. Among the books which once masqueraded under assumed names, many still survive, and their ghostly authors grin at us behind their false masks so nicely adjusted to them by the editors of biographical dictionaries.

Early in life I began reading the "Shakespeare" Works, very likely as the reader did, for amusement, and in time came

to realize, as no doubt the reader did, that they were written for instruction, the amusement serving as a lure to lead the mind by pleasant paths to loftier regions of philosophic thought. This revelation of a loftier motive than amusement in these remarkable works inevitably awakens in all a desire to become acquainted with their author. The result is disappointment. How, it is asked, is it possible that a strolling player to an ignorant rabble in inn-yards, or the London theater as it is described, could have been inspired with the ambition to promote an advancement of learning? This has been the question of reflective minds the world over, and they have recorded their opinions.

Said the German critic, Schlegel, in 1808, "Generally speaking I consider all that has been said about him personally to be a mere fable, a blind extravagant error." And Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in 1811, "What! are we to have miracles in sport? Does God choose idiots by whom to convey divine truths to man?"

Benjamin Disraeli wrote, in 1837: "And who is Shakespeare,' said Cadurcis. - Did he write half the plays attributed to him? Did he ever write a single whole play? I doubt it." And Ralph Waldo Emerson declared in 1838, that he could not "marry" him "to his verse," characterizing his life as "obscure and profane." Said Joseph Hart, in 1848: "He was not the mate of the literary characters of his day, and none knew it better than himself. It is a fraud upon the world to thrust his surreptitious fame upon us. The inquiry will be, Who were the able literary men who wrote the dramas imputed to him?" And William H. Furness,2 in 1866: "I am one of the many who have never been able to bring the life of William Shakespeare and the plays of Shakespeare within a planetary space of each other; are there any two things in the world more incongruous? Had the plays 1 Representative Men, p. 215. Boston, 1866. 2 The father of the literary ébéniste.