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If this book should excite sufficient interest to encourage the writer further to encounter public criticism, it is hoped to submit hereafter the larger work from which this small one has sprung, and to show in almost every department of knowledge and opinion Bacon's mind in Shakespeare's writings.

With regard to the Promus notes, which are at present under consideration, it seems desirable to state at the outset that the passages from the plays which have been appended to the entries do not profess to be, in all cases, parallels; nor, in many cases, to be brought forward as evidence—each taken singly—of the identity of the authorship in the Promus and in the plays. Neither does the collection of extracts profess to be a complete one; for no doubt a persistent study of the notes will add more, and sometimes better, illustrations than those which have been collected. It will require the combined efforts of many minds to bring the work which has been attempted to a satisfactory state of completion, and it is not to be hoped that there should not be at present errors, omissions, and weak points which will be corrected by further study.

The extracts are inserted for many different purposes. Some are intended to show identical forms of speech or identical phrases. Such, for instance, are the two hundred short turns of expression,' many of the English proverbs, the morning and evening salutations, and a few miscellaneous notes, chiefly metaphors, as 'Haile of Perle,' the air of his behaviour,' 'to enamel ' for 'to feign,'' mineral wits,' &c. Other passages show texts from the Bible, and Latin and foreign proverbs and sayings, either literally translated or apparently alluded to.

A third class of passages includes certain verbal like

shows that it was no unusual thing in those days for booksellers to set a well-known name to a book 'for sale's sake,' and that at least fifteen plays were published in Shakespeare's lifetime under his name or initials which have never been received into the genuine canon, and of which all but two, or portions of two, have been rejected by the best critics.

nesses introducing to the notice of the reader words, or uses of words, in Bacon and Shakespeare, which have not been found in previous or contemporary writers. Some of these are from the Latin or from foreign languages. Such are 'barajar,' for shuffle, 'real,' 'brazed,' 'uproused,' 'peradventure,' &c.

A fourth and very large class consists of illustrations of the manner in which the quotations which Bacon noted seem to have been utilised by him, or of quotations which, at any rate, exhibit the same thoughts cogitated, the same truths acquired, the same opinions expressed, the same antitheses used. There are, lastly, extracts from Shakespeare in which may be seen combined not only the sentiments and opinions of Bacon, but also some of his verbal peculiarities.

No one or two of these, perhaps not twenty such, might be held to afford proof that the writer of the notes was also the author of the plays; but the accumulation of so large a number of similarities of observation, opinion, and knowledge, mixed with so many peculiarities of diction, will surely help to turn the scale, or must at least add weight to other arguments in support of the so-called 'Baconian theory of Shakespeare,' of which arguments the present pages present but a fraction. It is observable that although references to the earlier plays are chiefly to be found in the notes of the earlier folios-whilst references to the later plays are abundant in the later folios—yet the later plays contain allusions to many of the earlier notes, but the earlier plays contain no allusions, or hardly any, which can be referred to the later notes, allowing for a few mistakes in the arrangement of the folios.

The subtle thoughts and highly antithetical expressions contained in folios 116 to 1236, and 128, are almost entirely absent from the early plays; whereas the turns of speech which are noted in folios 87, 126, and other places, run in increasing numbers through all the plays.

It will also be seen that in the Comedy of Errors and in

the Second Part of Henry VI. there are no forms of morning and evening salutation such as are noted in folio 111, and which appear in every play later than the date of that folio, namely, 1594. It does not appear impossible that further study of such points may throw additional light upon the dates and order of the plays. In cases where the same note appears two or three times in the Promus, it is usually found to be introduced into plays of distinct periods. For instance, the note on sweets turning to sours, in folio 94571 is repeated in folios 101b, 910. And so in the earlier plays we find it in Romeo and Juliet, in Sonnet 94, and in Lucrece; and, in the later plays, in Antony and Cleopatra, ii. 2, and Troilus and Cressida, iii. 1.

Before entering into detail it will be well also to point out to the reader that, although the whole of the Promus of Forms and Elegancies is now published in the order in which the papers are arranged amongst the Harleian Collection of MSS., yet it is by no means probable, nor is it intended to convey the impression, that all these notes were written by Bacon with the specific object of introducing them into any of his works.

Nevertheless, when the same notes are found repeated -as several of these notes are--not only in the Promus itself, but in other places, it is impossible to refuse to believe that they were connected very strongly with ideas in Bacon's mind, and that he intended to introduce and enforce the subjects of them. If, therefore, he wrote a series of plays at the same time that he was engaged upon other and graver works, there is nothing astonishing in discovering, amongst many notes which seem to refer only to the plays, a few notes which reappear literally or clearly in the Advancement of Learning, or in the essays, speeches, or letters of Bacon. Mr. Spedding's observations are sufficient assurance that but a small proportion of the notes can be traced in any of Bacon's acknowledged writings,'

1 A glance at the index will probably satisfy the reader that these

although those writings are, for the most part, plentifully 'stuffed' (to use Bacon's own expression) with quotations from the Bible and from classical authors.

For instance, in Book VII. of the De Augmentis or Advancement of Learning there are sixty-four such quotations, but of these only three are in the Promus; in Book VIII. there are 158, of which eight are in the Promus; and in Book IX. there are sixteen, none of which are noted.

When the Promus notes are traced, both in the prose works of Bacon and in the plays, it will be observed that in several cases the likeness between the note and the passage from the prose is less striking than the likeness between the note and some passage from the plays.

The folios which in the Harleian Collection have been arranged first in the series consist mainly of Latin quotations from the Vulgate and from the classics. These are amongst the least interesting papers in the Promus, and contain but few entries which, taken alone, could be thought to afford evidence that their writer was the author of the plays. All that could be urged on that point would be, that at all events the entries which seem to have relation to the plays and sonnets are far more numerous than those which can be connected with passages in the prose works of Bacon.

Nevertheless, even in these unpromising folios, heterogeneous and disconnected as their contents may at first sight appear to be, there is something which persuades one that it is an unsatisfactory manner of accounting for the notes to say that Bacon must have jotted them down during a course of reading merely in order to strengthen or assist his memory. For although in some cases the

notes were not intended to assist in the composition of Bacon's graver works.

1 It will be seen that the folios, or separate sheets, upon which the notes are written, have been numbered as they occur in the Harleian Collection, and that the first of the folios belonging to the Promus is

No. 83.

quotations are entered in due sequence, yet in the majority of instances no order whatever is observed, later lines, verses, chapters, or books being quoted before earlier passages, and extracts from various authors mixed up or taken by turns. This surely does not look as if the primary object of these notes was to recall to memory the day's reading. It seems to point to some other aim, and a closer examination of the notes reveals a thread of connecting thought or sentiment running through many of these apparently isolated sentences. In folios 88 and 886 there are a number of texts from the Vulgate, some of which are placed to a certain degree in consecutive order, and others in no order at all. It will be seen that the whole of these have some relation to wisdom. There are texts on the pursuit of wisdom, on the connection between wisdom and truth, on the differences seen in the scorner and the patient inquirer after truth, the wisdom of silence, the flippancy of fools; on the light of truth— that it comes from God; that God's glory is to conceal and man's to discover; that the words of the wise are precious, or as goads; that, after all, a man knows nothing of himself, and so forth.

In other places there are miscellaneous notes from various authors, which, when considered together, are found to contain food for reflection on an immense variety of abstract subjects-hope, justice, counsel, grief, joy, folly, strength, virtue, courage, anger, rage, friendship, love, hatred, dissimulation, speech, brevity, silence, life, death, &c.

Such subjects may well be supposed to have occupied the thoughts of one who was preparing to write essays on all that comes most home to the hearts and bosoms of men,' and often, in reading the essays, there is an echo in the memory of these notes. But although such passages in the essays are not one in ten-perhaps not one in thirty, compared with the passages in the plays where similar sentiments and similar allusions, and sometimes

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