grace of God, would have made him reveal his authorship, in order to have said of him

"Be sure (our Bacon) thou cans't never die

But, crown'd with laurel live eternally;"

and to have taken to himself the encomiums of Francis Meres that his productions ranked with those of Seneca and Plautus.

Bacon's own words, in his apology in the matter of the estrangement of Essex, are:"I ever set this down, that the only course to be held with the Queen, was by obsequiousness, and observance. In the first book of the Advancement of Learning, he says:-" in regard of the love and reverence towards learning, which the example and countenance of two so learned princes, Queen Elizabeth and your Majesty, being as Castor and Pollux, lucida sidera, stars of excellent light and most benign influence, hath wrought in all men of place and authority."

Let any one read the dedication of Bacon to King James of his Advancement of Learning, and he must be struck with it's sycophan

tish and fulsome adulation-a few lines will suffice:-"I have touched, yea, and possessed with an extreme wonder at those your virtues and faculties, which the Philosophers call intellectual; the largeness of your capacity, the faithfulness of your memory, the swiftness of your apprehension, the penetration of your judgment, and the facility and order of your elocution. ****** I am well assured that this which I shall say is no amplification at all, but a positive and measured truth; which is, that there hath not been since Christ's time any King or temporal monarch, which hath been so learned in all literature and erudition, divine and human." Such a dedication as this may account, to a certain extent, for Charles Kingsley's sweeping assertion against James:-"If to have found England one of the greatest countries in Europe, and to have left it one of the most inconsiderable and despicable; if to be fooled by flatterers to the top of his bent, until he fancied himself all but a god, while he was not even a

man, and could neither speak the truth, keep himself sober, nor look on a drawn sword without shrinking."

Macaulay says of him:

"His cowardice, his childishness, his pedantry, his ungainly person and manner, his provincial accent, made him an object of derision."

David Hume says of him :

"His learning bordered on pedantry, his pacific disposition on pusillanimity, his wisdom on cunning, his friendship on light fancy and boyish fondness."

This will be sufficient to establish Bacon's obsequiousness, without using his own words in his apology:—

"I ever set this down, that the only course to be held with the Queen was by obsequiousness and observance."

Mark the contrast between the play actor and young poet's manly dedications* of the

"Venus & Adonis" and "Lucrece

Lucrece" to the

Earl of Southampton, and Bacon's dedica'tion of the "Advancement of Learning" to King James; it is as apparent as the difference between the absolute poetry of Bacon, and the poetry of Shakspere, which will presently be shown.

Bacon's desire for posthumous fame is best expressed in his own words :

"I account the use that a man should seek of the publishing of his own writings before his death to be but an untimely anticipation of that which is proper to follow a man, and not to go along with him."

In a letter to Mr. Toby Matthew in 1623, (the year of Heminge & Condell's Folio edittion of Shakspere), he writes:—

"It is true my labours are now most set to have those works which I have formerly published, as that of "Advancement of Learning," that of Henry VII., that of the Essays, being retractate and made more perfect, well translated into Latin by the help of some good

pens which forsake me not. For these modern languages will, at one time or other, play the bankrupt with books; and since I have lost much time with this age, I would be glad to recover it with posterity.

In his dedication of the 1625 edition he says: "I do now publish my Essays, which of all my other works have been most current. For that as it seems, they come to men's business and bosoms. I have enlarged them both in number and weight; so that indeed they are a new work. I thought it therefore agreeable to my affection and obligation to your Grace, to prefix your name before them, both in English and Latin. For I do conceive that the Latin volume of them (being in the universal language)* may last as long as books last."

*The desire for fame is so strong, that he must have his writings put in a language known to all scholars, irrespective of their nationality.

Would the writing of Shakspere's plays have been time lost with this age? Would they be considered as "but toys to come" amongst his essays?