that in dread of its effects upon his subjects, the king himself denounced its use in a strong essay entitled "A Counterblast against Tobacco." Camden also published a powerful argument against its use. Orthography in those days was unsettled. Words were spelled by sound rather than by rule, and generally the best scholars adopted rules of their own. The word "tobacco," by its various forms of pronunciation, was blessed with an orthography that would fill a small dictionary. The following furnish a few of the varieties: Tobaco, tobacco, tobaca, tobacy, tobaccy, 'bacco, 'bacy, etc., ad infinitum. The second syllable was as perfect then as now. Bacon, by confession in this stanza, must have enjoyed his pipe. It soothed him, quieted his nerves, and favored that composure of the faculties needful to reflection and invention. It was undoubtedly his habit to resort to it in the hours given to the creation of his great dramas. It was in the placidity which it imparted to his system and the meditative mood it inspired that he virtually "kept invention." His thoughts were clearer, his plots better in development, and his poesy more exuberant than they would have been without this sedative. In every form which spelling gave to tobacco, it almost told the name of Bacon. This evidence of the true origin of the dramas of Shakespeare, written by their author and published nearly three centuries ago, during Shakespeare's life, cannot by any force of logic or ingenuity be destroyed. It is unargumentable. It imparts the force of truth to this entire history, and relieves it of the suggestion, improbable in itself, that Shakespeare, for aught that appears, might have written it himself. No other name can fill the requirements of the line but that of Bacon. No anagram could be constructed which would avoid that conclusion connected with the lines preceding and following it. How plain, then, does it appear that Bacon alone was the author, when we connect the announcement made in this stanza with those parts of the poem which describe his compulsory attendance upon the queen, after his appointment as counsel extraordinary; his long months of suspense, sorrow, and disappointment. spent in the effort to obtain the office of solicitorgeneral, and his transfer of the dramas to "Will" (Shakespeare),-matters which could not possibly have formed any part of Shakespeare's life. Aside from other evidences the poem may contain, the appearance of Bacon's name shows a deliberate purpose in him to reveal himself to posterity as the author of the dramas. He would not otherwise have written this stanza, or for that matter this poem, for both were unnecessary for any other purpose. The poem, with the exception of a few stanzas, has no special merit, and being entirely unintelligible and silly without interpretation of some kind, no such person as the author of the great dramas would have written it for mere pastime. All former interpretations it has received have been nearly as incomprehensible as the bare poem itself. They tell no credible, no consecutive, story; make Shakespeare a licentious fool, and hold him up before the world as the vilest kind of a debauchee, and most unprincipled of men among men, on his own confession. This cannot be true. Regarding it as an allegory which contains the history of the great dramas, and those parts of it which cursorily considered convey a prurient meaning, as parts illustrative of the circumstances and conditions under which those dramas were written, it becomes a work of the greatest possible importance, full of interest and worth, and invaluable in the history it reveals of the greatest works in all literature. Half the persons accused of and tried for the highest crimes known to our laws have been convicted and punished on much weaker testimony than is herein contained in proof of Bacon's authorship. Great lawyer as he was, Bacon was not unmindful of this, and shaped his narrative accordingly. The only fault that can be found with it is, that he succeeded too well in eluding detection, and reared an image which has been so long and so universally idolized, that it has become easier for the world to cling to the false worship than to receive the real divinity. "O, know, sweet Love, I always write of You, and You and Love are still My argument" (he always wrote of Beauty, and at this time he was writing of beauty and love conjoined), from which I infer that the particular play upon which he was engaged was "Romeo and Juliet," which White seems to think was written in 1596. If I have conjectured rightly, it was written in 1594, just previous to the time he engaged in the strife for the solicitorship, which required all his energies. In view of any possible clew it might furnish to his exposure as a playwright, it may have been withheld from the stage until 1596, several months after his defeat. "So all my best is dressing old words new, spending again what is already spent" (this play is founded upon a novel written by Matteo Bandello, and published in 1554, so that it was indeed a "dressing old words new," etc.). "My love" (his dramas), like the sun, new in the morning, old in the evening, unites the old and the new in her composition. I think that "invention" in the sixth line was written by the author in the plural. It is the antecedent referred to in the eighth line, which being plural, should determine its number. A slight oversight of the proof-reader reasonably accounts for the mistake. "Showing their birth, and where they did proceed," can allude only to the "inventions" or dramas, as contrasted with the "new-found methods" and "compounds strange" of other writers of "the time." This view is strengthened by the two succeeding lines:— 66 "O, know, sweet Love, I always write of You, He was "still" at the time delineating Love and SONNET 77. Thy glass will show Thee how Thy beauties wear, Look, what Thy memory cannot contain Commit to these waste blanks, and Thou shalt find These offices, so oft as Thou wilt look, Shall profit Thee, and much enrich Thy book. This stanza is descriptive of his initiatory labor in the preparation for writing a drama. "Thy glass" alludes to and signifies public opinion. This will determine whether the truth and beauty supplied by Thy (Thought), when transformed by Thou (Truth) into the dramas, will be of permanent or temporary interest. "Thy dial," the indicator of time's flight, will show him the value of moments in this work. "The vacant |