O'Shaughnessy who took the title of Sandys. The same name in the early history of the United States was turned into Chauncey.

The changes in Ulster in O'Donovan's lifetime were still more numerous. O'Brollaghan had become Bradley; O'Creighan, Creighton; O'Fergus, Ferguson. MacTeighe was Montague; O'Mulligan, Molyneaux; MacGilclusky, Cosgrove. MacGillyglass was translated to Greene, from its last syllable, MacShane to Johnson. Stranger was the transformation of Carolan to Carleton, of O'Hea to Hughes and O'Tuathalain to Toland. Hughes was also substituted for Mackey in many places. The change was made on the supposition that the Irish Christian name Aodh, from which Mackey was formed in Gaelic, was equivalent to Hugh.

In some cases the new names were coined so peculiarly that their Irish character remains evident under the new dress. Of this class are Hearne and Heron, Hynes, Rooke, Owens, Hussey, Reynolds, Norton, Conway, Agnew and Leonard, which are commonly recognized as Irish, though scarcely Celtic. They all, however, are of that class, and seventy years ago were Ahearne, O'Heyne, O'Rourke, O'Howen, O'Heosa, Mac Rannal, O'Naghton, O'Conwy, O'Gruve and MacGillyfineen. The name Leonard was also adopted by a branch of the MacGuires, of Fermanagh, and has a distinctive. Gaelic origin there. In Connaugh, according to O'Donovan, Mulligan was often turned into Baldwin.

The selection of English forms is more marked in the changes. from MacGuigin to Goodwin, O'Luain to Lambe, Eoghan as Eugene. In Ulster the last name is Owen in modern form, as Aodh or Ed is Hugh. Other names formerly common were Cormac, Conn, Tirlough, Art, Rory, Coll, Cathal, Randal, Eochy, Eamon, Manus, Teige, Donough, Murrough, Diarmud, Domnall, Felim and Connor. Donnough and Murrough are only preserved among the O'Briens in their original form. Dr. Hyde thinks that Patrick, Brian, Owen and Cormac are the only ancient Irish names that hold their place in general use to-day. Teigue has become Thadeus or Tady in the families which preserve it in a way for tradition sake. Cathal has become Charles, Diarmud Jeremiah or Darby, Domnall Daniel, Felim Felix, Turlough Terence and Eamon Edmund. Of female names Bride has become Bridget, Nora Honora, Una Winny, Mave Maud, Eileen Ellen. Efee, Sive, Nuala and Fionuala, once common, are now scarcely found even in Ireland.

Of changes in historic Irish names to other than English forms, and which may be supposed to have been a natural development apart from official interference, O'Donovan gives some curious. particulars. Mac Giolla Patrick of Ossory was changed to the French looking Fitzpatrick. O'Dorcy in Galway took the French

form D'Arcy; O’Dulaine, a family settled from time immemorial in the Queens county, is now Delany. A former editor of the London Times of this stock further altered it to Delano. O'Mullaville in Connaught in like way has become Lavelle and McCogry, Lestrange. Most of the French names in Ireland to-day are, however, of Huguenot origin and identified closely with the English element. LaTouche, Dubedat and Lefanu are prominent examples. On the other hand, a German element introduced under the first George as a Protestant colony from the Palatinate of the Rhine has been absorbed into the Irish Catholic population in all but name. Henricken, Brann, Brownrigg and Delmege are of this class.

The origin of the Murphys, the largest in number of any name in Ireland to-day, is traced by O'Donovan to two stocks. One was the royal family of Leinster, MacMurrough, the other an offshoot of it long distinguished as O'Murchadoo. Both the original forms have almost disappeared, but the Celtic type is clearly preserved in the Murphy form.

The list of changes of Celtic names given by O'Donovan and Dr. Hyde is so long that one might be inclined to believe it included the majority of the race. Such is very far from the fact. The families who readily swapped their surnames for others were mostly of small clans. The great body of the population fell into larger divisions-the O'Neills, O'Briens, MacCarthys, O'Connors, O'Ferralls, O'Donnells, O'Kellys and other powerful clans. These have rarely changed except by omitting the prefix O, which was generally dropped after the Williamite Conquest. It evidently was regarded with special disfavor either as aristocratic or connected closely with the clan system. The Mac was less strictly proscribed, probably on account of its prevalence in Scotland as well as in Ireland.

It is strange to find O'Donovan in 1840 writing: "In Leinster it is certain there is not a single instance in which the O or Mac has been retained by any of the aboriginal inhabitants. I mean the ancient Irish Leinster not including Meath." Nevertheless, in Leinster, as in the rest of Ireland to-day, the great majority of the names show unmistakably a Celtic origin. It may be regretted that a certain proportion of the Irish people have shown a readiness to change their fathers' names for motives like those given by O'Donovan, but it must not be assumed that anything like a majority have done so. The change of language from Irish to English during the nineteenth century led to most of the alterations.

A similar result follows in nearly every case where a population is brought by migration or other causes under the influence of a new tongue. It is marked among the Scandinavian and Portuguese

immigrants to our own land to a much wider extent than among the Irish, even those from Irish-speaking districts. On the whole, the Irish race abroad retains its national names almost as it does at home, and its extent may fairly be traced in any district by their prevalence.

A curious list was prepared by the Irish census authorities a few years ago which confirms this view. We have not it under our eyes at present, but it showed an overwhelming predominance of Celtic names. The largest in numbers was Murphy, the second Kelly, neither with the national prefix for the most part, but neither mistakable for any but Gaelic origin. The first numbered sixty-two thousand, about one in eighty of the whole population; the Kellys, fifty-six thousand, or one in ninety, approximately. Sullivans and O'Sullivans were somewhat over a half per cent. in the whole population, and O'Neills not much less numerous. Spenser's desire for the total abolition and forbidding of the hated prefixes is yet very far from accomplishment; indeed, they have revived very considerably since the very time when O'Donovan wrote. It may be an earnest of a wider national revival in other ways. In the meantime it may be interesting for any one interested in tracing the Irish element's extent in this country to try the proportion of Murphys, Kellys or Sullivans in a city directory.

San Francisco, Cal.

BRYAN J. CLINCH.

T

LORD BACON AS A POET.

HE immensity of Bacon's genius is a sore trouble to his biographers. So say two of them, Professor Gardiner and Dr. Edwin Abbott in his preface to Bacon's Life. The truth of the saying has been practically illustrated with regard to the poetic aspects of Bacon's mind and works. That aspect has been for centuries usually taken for granted rather than discussed or denied. Recent controversies, however, have brought it into prominence and elicited contradictory views. Into the general merits of those controversies this paper does not mean to enter. What I wish to examine is how far a weapon serviceable for any cause or a breastplate of truth against any attack can be forged out of the belief that Bacon was little or nothing of a poet. That belief has sometimes been expressed with considerable emphasis. I consider, however, that it implies a total misconception of Bacon's

peculiar genius. The immensity and many-sidedness of his powers, his ambitions and his efforts have caused a certain number of writers who speak as having authority to misconceive and deny one of the most essential, if perhaps least obvious, characteristics of his genius and its manifestations. Not only is the question "Could Bacon have written the Shakespeare plays?" a perfectly reasonable one, but to answer it in the negative seems to me, after much study of both great writers, very much more difficult than some recent antiBaconian advocates have found it. I am indebted to so many and various books, that I feel at liberty to mention none of them in particular. I may refer, however, to Mr. Read's "Francis Bacon Our Shakespeare" as one of the best of "Baconian" books, and I may say that I owe nothing to Mr. Stronach's article in the current Fortnightly Review on "Bacon as a Poet," which singularly coincides in every respect, as far as its brevity permits, with the present paper.

I have been asked to justify myself for speaking of "Lord Bacon." No such title, I am reminded, was ever known to the Heralds Office. It is enough for me, however, that this convenient appellation is justified by a long line of the highest literary authorities. The following are the more important writers whom I have noted as using the form "Lord Bacon:" Pope, Swift, Hume, Dr. Blair, Dugald Stewart, De Quincey, Hallam, Macaulay, Coleridge, Shelley, Emerson, Lord Byron, Lord Mahon, Alex. Smith, Edgar Poe, Francis Palgrave, Stopford Brook, Spedding, Ellis & Dixon (Bacon's biographers), Matthew Arnold and Thomas Arnold. Even a shorter list would probably have satisfied the minds of my inquiring friends.

In fact, the vehement negative, garnished with abusive rhetoric, which has been put forth by some influential critics-English, American and German-almost compels me to believe that its supporters had taken no trouble to become really acquainted with the works of Bacon. In some unexpected cases there is further evidence for so believing. Take, for example, Professor Wülker, known as an authority on Anglo-Saxon matters, as a writer against the Bacon-Shakespeare theory and as the author of a well-known history of English literature. This latter work gives me serious reason to doubt whether Professor Wülker has more than a nodding acquaintance with Lord Bacon and his writings. It will be hardly believed, but it is a fact, that in this history of English literature, which devotes a dozen pages to Lord Lytton, sixteen or seventeen to Dickens and one or two, oddly enough, to the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy, Lord Bacon is otherwise completely ignored.

Take, again, Professor Heusler, of whose knowledge of Bacon

I know nothing except what I conclude from some of his statements. For example, that "Bacon was not only not a poet, but his manner of thinking and feeling was eminently prosaic and so are his most original images.'

In England and America we come across Mr. Churton Collins and Mr. R. G. White, who have courageously committed themselves to statements of the utmost plainness and directness. "Bacon," they say (more or less in these words), "was utterly devoid of the poetical faculty even in a secondary sense. He was a cautious observer and investigator, ever looking at man and things through the dry light of cool reason; a logician, a formalist, a man without a spark of genial humor, without a trace of dramatic imagination, without any light play of wit and fancy, any profound passion, any æsthetic enthusiasm, anything, in fact, which goes to make up a poet of any kind." Then there are other popular arguments to the same effect. Bacon was a busy lawyer, who could not have time or interest to spare for the quiet doings of the muses. He was a scientist, though in truth a somewhat unaccountable one; he was the champion of a philosophy which aimed at bringing down philosophy from soaring in the heavens to walk upon solid earth, and therefore was produced by an unpoetical mind. He was an ambitious man, full of Machiavellian saws, keenly set on office, favor and promotion; obviously the antithesis of a poet!

It appears to me that these views are due, on the part of those who know something about Bacon, mainly to controversial heat, and on the part of the many who know little or nothing, to the customary unwillingness to accord to any individual preeminence in more than one or two things, to ignoring the vagaries of human inconsistency and to forgetting the power of great genius to break way for itself in many directions at once.

Let us begin, then, by remarking the evidence which Bacon, lawyer, judge, philosopher and scientist as he was, gave, nevertheless, of his interest in works of pure literature, even of light literature. There seems no doubt that his propensities in that direction seriously hampered his advance in his chosen profession. He was looked upon as a dreamer and a theorizer, one from whom it was not safe to expect the concentration of the practical lawyer or the tact and push of the man of business. Hence for long years he was by no means "a busy lawyer" (as we have seen him frequently styled), and, consequently, far indeed from being a wealthy lawyer. He was constantly in dire straits for money, and once in prison for debt. I have spoken of the law as his "chosen profession," but in reality, as he did not choose it of his own free will, so neither did he love it at all for its own sake, but merely regarded it as a stepping