tify his calling. At the top of the picture in an oval panel is a city under a tempestuous sky at night, illuminated by numerous beacons. It is to be noted that in the reign of Elizabeth the letters ea in this word were given the sound of long a, which led to a play upon Bacon's name, he being called "Bacon," the great "Beacon of the State." This panel is also decorated with conventional masks of Tragedy, Comedy, and Farce, which are quite out of place in a book of this character. In the lower panel the man who is seen giving the manuscript to the rustic appears seated at a table writing in a massive volume. The rustic, now arrayed in one of the "glaring Satten Sutes," ascribed to actors by the author of "The Return from Parnassus," holds a rope attached to the writer's girdle to show his subservience to him, and is lifting the heraldic Cap of Maintenance from his superior's head, evidently to put this honorable decoration upon his own. The Cap of Maintenance, symbol of nobility, was coveted by the gentry and was finally appropriated by them.1

A remarkable title-page is in the edition of Montaigne's Essays published in London in 1632. Montaigne was a friend of Bacon, who has been criticized for imitating him in some of his essays. The Frenchman's work was first published in Bordeaux in 1580, about the time that its author became mayor of that city. In 1601, John Florio, also a friend of Bacon, translated it into English, and it became quite popular among the few who read such works. We are gravely told by a recent orthodox writer that "His essays were diligently read by Bacon and Shakespeare," presumably because the plays and Bacon's Essays are thought to reflect their influence. Florio, it should be remembered, translated Bacon's Essays into French. Let us examine this title-page: Looking at it we see on the right a broken arch, which is a reversed letter F: the two open arches in the background, a letter B, which is best seen by turning the page half to the right. We thus 1 Century Dictionary, in loco.

have the initials of Bacon's name. To make this still plainer, looking through the arch on the left we see in the distance a beacon. The letters are reversed, presumably to make the puzzle more difficult to decipher. Of course, it might be claimed that the arches were so formed accidentally, but when we carefully read a little poem appended to it, we find ourselves informed that each "leaf and angle" has a hidden meaning, and

If then

You understand not, give him room that can.

To show Bacon's connection with Montaigne's "Essays," we have two witnesses; his handwriting in the Bordeaux Montaigne of 1588 and the title-page to the English translation of 1632.

The question of what might have been Bacon's connection with Montaigne's Essays has occasioned some discussion, but more speculation, especially stimulated by the cryptic title-page, which we have described. Professor Strowski1 has called attention to a copy of the 1588 edition of these Essays belonging to the city of Bordeaux, of which Montaigne was mayor for the period of four years previous to this date. This particular copy of this edition is copiously annotated on its "shining margents" and is "extended by the addition of a third book." In the Gournay edition of 1595, some of these notes were used, but until now they seem to have escaped critical examination. Mr. Smedley has called attention to one of these pages of which he says that "every word of writing . . . is from the hand of Francis Bacon." Latin, as in the case of Montaigne, was his mother tongue, and was the language he usually employed when writing on the margins of Greek, Hebrew, and Latin works. Mr. Smedley selects from this page the words "Socrates" and "Socratique," which he compares

1 The Bordeaux Montaigne, edited by Fortunat Strowski, has recently been published under the title, Les Essais de Michel de Montaigne. Publiés d'après l'exemplaire de Bordeaux, etc. Sous les auspices de la Commission des Archives Municipales. Bordeaux. Imprimerie Nouvelle F. Pech & Cie. 1909. Vol. 2.

with the same words found in a copy of Plato's works in Greek, similarly annotated by Bacon. With his consent we reproduce his illustration.

Mr. Smedley calls attention to the fact

that in each case the three first letters, Soc, are never joined together. In the Montaigne the c is not joined to the r, and the same peculiarity is found

in specimens given from the Plato volume. Then

бостанца

Fideles." On the titlepage we have the figure of a philosopher

Socram

NOTES TO PLATO

From Montaigne's Essays, Bordeaux copy, 1588.

Bacon-pointing with his right hand to a female poised upon a globe, and holding a scroll which serves as a sail to bear her along, and if we turn to the "New Atlantis" we find that a virgin with a scroll signifies Poetry. On the table is a doubly clasped book and hour-glass. Presumably this is a volume of poetry which in time will be unclasped. The three persons seated at the table whom he is addressing represent the three orders, the prince, the lord, and the commoner, whose attention he is calling to the genius of Poetry.

Referring to the title-page of Bacon's "Henry the Seventh," we see, standing upon a globe, the figure of Nemesis, her left hand on the wheel of fortune, in her pleasant aspect of the dispenser of equal justice, holding in her right hand a jar of salt