dence concerning their origin. Bacon gave to time the revealment of a history which he dared not tell during his life. Shakespeare retired to enjoy the fortune he had acquired, and the fame of his imputed authorship, until the true author should be discovered. I have no doubt that Bacon reasoned that there was fame enough for him in the Novum Organum, De Augmentis, and his other philosophical works; but at the same time. felt a deep pang of regret whenever it occurred to him that these great dramas might never be appreciated as the first and richest fruits of his mighty genius.

SONNET 65.

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,

But sad mortality o'ersways their power,

How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O, how shall summer's honey breath hold out
Against the wrackful siege of battering days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong, but time decays?
O fearful meditation! where, alack,
Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
Or who his spoil of Beauty can forbid?

O, none, unless this miracle have might,

That in black ink My Love may still shine bright.

He infers from the argument in the preceding stanza that nothing can preserve his dramas, unless it is the ink with which from time to time they may be printed. All durable objects of hu

man origin are sooner or later destroyed by the ravages of Time,-even the sea and earth are subject to changes wrought by him. How, with no adequate power of resistance, is Beauty to contend successfully with this destroyer? Amid the wrecks which war and siege make, what shall prolong her sweet life? How can she live when Time consumes the strongest structures of stone and metal? It is fearful to contemplate what may become of "Time's best jewel," or where she may be concealed to escape this general ruin. There is no help for her unless the "miracle" (the marvellous power) of being multiplied in printer's ink shall cause "My Love" (the dramas), to "shine bright" (to be perpetuated).

SONNET 66.

Tir'd with all these, for restful death I cry,
As, to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily foresworn,
And gilded honour shamefully misplac'd,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgrac❜d,
And strength by limping sway disabled,
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill,
And simple truth miscall'd simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill;

Tir'd with all these, from these would I begone,
Save that, to die, I leave My Love alone.

His object in this stanza, in summarizing the subjects illustrated by the plays written and per

formed, at this time, is doubtless to show that by their departure from Truth and nature they were evil and corrupt in their influence. He had no patience with their character, and when he says, "for restful death I cry," it was a polite form of expressing our slang phrase "give us a rest," and meant the same. The playwrights were crowding the stage with sensational pieces, not unlike those of our own day. The subjects as expressed in the stanza explain themselves better than any language of mine can do it. They show that the theatre in Elizabeth's time was not reliable as a school of morality, and the taste which tolerated the grand creations of Bacon was better satisfied, perhaps, with the blood-curdling dramas of Webster, or the licentious comedies of Green, Ben Jonson, and Beaumont and Fletcher. Whatever the plays, and whoever the writers, no stronger evidence of their immoral tendencies are needed than that they were condemned by the author of the plays attributed to Shakespeare. His distaste for them was strong enough to make him wish to "begone" from them, "save that to die" (to go from them) would be to "leave My Love alone" (to forsake his own dramas).

SONNET 67.

Ah! wherefore with infection should he live,

And with his presence grace impiety,

That sin by him advantage should achieve
And lace itself with his society?

Why should false painting imitate his check,
And steal dead seeing of his living hue?
Why should poor beauty indirectly seek
Roses of shadow, since his rose is true?
Why should he live, now Nature bankrupt is,
Beggar'd of blood to blush through lively veins ?
For she hath no exchequer now but his,

And, proud of many, lives upon his gains.

O, him she stores, to show what wealth she had
In days long since, before these last so bad.

His contempt for the dramas of his own day, emphasized by his regret at seeing his own dramas in their company, is more fully expressed in this and the following stanza. Why should the beauty which he has illustrated live with such "infection" (exposed to the contamination of their influence), and thus in representation tolerate their untruth and vulgarity? Why should their profanity and obscenity find a place on the stage where his dramas are performed? Why should those who personate their characters imitate the natural beauty of the characters he had drawn, by giving a false color to their faces, and a livid hue to their flesh? Why should Beauty as exhibited by them, by these and other indirect means, decorate himself, when his own adornment only is the truest of ornaments? Why should Beauty, devoid of all natural grace, "beggar'd of blood to blush through lively veins" (his true nature concealed with paint and gewgaws), be attempted in the performances? Nature "hath no exchequer now but his" (he in his truth furnishes the real wealth of all true

characterizations), and "proud of many, lives upon his gains" (many dramas have been written in which life has been fitly represented), but they are withdrawn from the stage. Their great superiority to those now in vogue is painfully apparent by contrast.

SONNET 68.

Thus in his cheek the map of days outworn,
When beauty liv'd and died as flowers do now,
Before these bastard signs of fair were born,
Or durst inhabit on a living brow;
Before the golden tresses of the dead,
The right of sepulchres, were shorn away,
To live a second life on second head,
Ere Beauty's dead fleece made another gay:
In him those holy antique hours are seen,
Without all ornament, itself and true,
Making no summer of another's green,
Robbing no old to dress his Beauty new;

And him as for a map doth Nature store,
To show false Art what beauty was of yore.

His indignation at the artificiality in which the drama is represented is expressed in this stanza. "Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn, when beauty liv'd and died as flowers do now" (we see, as upon a map, in the drama of past years, what Beauty was when life and death in character were naturally represented). "Before these bastard signs of fair were born" (before personal decoration was introduced, or even permitted in use; before the hair was cut from the heads of the dead