Bacon's DictionaryAppendices

3 Harman Edward. Edmund Spenser and the Impersonations of Francis Bacon, 1914

4 Spedding. Letters and Life of Bacon. Vol. I. p. 119

 

The next question was whether the portions of the lines beyond the brackets should be left blank, to be supplied according to the taste of each reader, or whether an attempt should be made to assist him by supplying them conjecturally, and at least showing one way in which it may be done. The result of my own study of the mutilated manuscript has convinced me that it is best to make the attempt. The loss of two or three words at the end of every line makes it impossible to follow the sense as you read; and the necessity of stopping to make it out destroys the effect of the composition upon the imagination. Nay, even after you have made it out and filled up the blanks to your own satisfaction, a second reading, unless the words are set down in their places, will prove but an uneasy progress; and I fancy that even of diligent readers few will take pleasure in it. I have therefore filled up these blanks as well as I could; the bracket always showing where my inventions begin, and the conditions as to space which they were bound to satisfy; and if I have not hit upon the right words, I have at least made all the pages readable, except for the three or four lines at the bottom, the loss of which, though much to be regretted, is not enough (being only three or four in every forty) to neutralize the value of the rest.

Of what remains of the manuscript I have endeavoured to give an exact copy in all respects but one; and that is the punctuation; an exact representation of which would have made the printed page difficult to read and served no useful purpose. The transcriber was probably accustomed to copy legal documents, in which points had no value, and sentences were not divided. For though it cannot be said that there is no punctuation at all, it is introduced so irregularly that it serves rather to confuse than to explain the construction. The end of a sentence is often not marked by a full stop. The beginning of the next is rarely distinguished by a capital letter. Commas, colons, and notes of interrogation are inserted occasionally, but upon no system; and if all the points had been omitted altogether, the construction would, I think, upon the whole have been clearer. For though the composition was not meant to be independent of punctuation, there is in fact no single place in which the intended construction is really doubtful. Presuming therefore that the punctuation of the manuscript means nothing, I have taken the liberty of substituting my own, and also of putting capital letters at the beginning of sentences. In every thing else the manuscript has been exactly followed. No alteration in the spelling has been consciously allowed; and all the contractions have been carefully preserved. I have not, indeed, cared to imitate the particular form of contraction used in each case by the transcriber, but wherever a contraction occurs I have used some form of letter which will sufficiently indicate the contraction intended. This I held to be important, as bearing upon the filling up of the blank spaces; for both the spelling and the contractions make a considerable difference in the space which a word will occupy. Only in the passages which are supplied from Stephens’s manuscript (the orthography of which varies considerably from this in those parts which can be compared, and would be quite as likely to mislead the conjecturer as to guide him), I have not cared to reproduce the exact forms, nor refrained from obvious corrections of the text.

The Northumberland House manuscript is, for the most part, remarkably clear and correct; it is very seldom that there can be any doubt what letter is intended, and the mistakes are very few. Still mistakes do occur. Here and there a word is omitted; once or twice a word or phrase is repeated: once or twice a word has evidently been misread. Nevertheless, I have tried to represent the manuscript in its original state, errors and all; reserving all corrections, as well as all explanations and illustrations, to the notes at the end. Where an interlinear insertion of an omitted word has been apparently made by the transcriber himself, I have preserved it; admitting the word into its place in the lines, if there was not. But interlinear insertions or corrections by another hand, of which there are a few, I have neglected in the text, and reserved for description in the notes. These are all conjectural emendations, sometimes certainly wrong, sometimes meant apparently for corrections, not of the text, but of the opinion expressed in it, and are clearly no part of the original writing, nor made by the writer’s authority.

One of my chief difficulties has arisen from the irregularity of the hand-writing in point of closeness; which, though always very clear, and apparently very uniform, contrives sometimes to get more words into the line than can be printed without overcrowding, and sometimes to fill the line up with fewer than can be spread over the printed line without scattering. To meet this difficulty with the least disfigurement of the page, and yet observe the rule of printing line for line, the margin has in some pages been a little contracted or a little enlarged, as the case required. It will naturally be asked what else the MS., contains. It is a folio volume of twenty-two sheets, which have been laid one upon the other, folded double (as in an ordinary quire of paper), and fastened by a stitch through the centre. 5

 

Allowing for Spedding’s comments to give room for Frank J. Burgoyne in his Elizabethan Manuscript, 1904 to state, that “Since Mr. Spedding wrote, the manuscript has been taken to pieces and each leaf carefully inlaid in stout paper, and these have been bound up with a large paper copy of his pamphlet entitled A Conference of Pleasure, the manuscript in its present condition contains 45 leaves, so Mr. Spedding does not appear to have included the outside page in his enumeration. The pages are not numbered, and there are no traces of stitching or sewing; it is therefore quite impossible even to conjecture what was the number of sheets in the original volume.”

 

Spedding’s account:

But as the pages are not numbered, and the fastening is gone, it may once have contained more, and, if we may judge by what is still legible on the much bescribbled outside leaf which once served for a table of contents, there is some reason to suspect that it did. This leaf has one feature which has been thought singular enough to make it worth giving in facsimile, and which I will speak of presently. But I will first deal with the question concerning the contents of the volume which it covered; and I begin with an account of what it contains now:

 

1. First comes the piece which is here printed, and of which, therefore, I need say no more. A short essay, entitled Of Magnanimitie or heroicall Vertue. This is evidently a composition of Bacon’s; but the substance is to be found in a better form in the Advancement of Learning.
2. An advertisement touching private cens[ure]. This is an enquiry concerning the limits and bounds of what we should now call “toleration” in religious disputes; a rudiment, apparently, of the piece which follows.
3. An advertisement touching the controversies of the Church of England. This is Bacon’s well-known tract, first printed in 1640, and to be found in all editions of his collected works.
4. A letter to a French gent: touching y^e proceedings in Engl: in ecclesiasticall causes, translated out of French into English by W.W. This is an unfinished paper; but it is a copy, so far as it goes, of the same letter which was first printed in the Scrinia Sacra (Ed. 1654), with the heading, “Sir Francis Walsingham, Secretary, to Monsieur Critoy, secretary of France:” a letter which I have always believed to have been written by Bacon. 6 This copy ends abruptly towards the bottom of the second page, the other side of which is left blank. It is to be observed that this is the middle sheet of the volume, and if it ever contained more, this is the place where they must have come in.
5. The Hermitt’s first speech; The Hermitt’s second speech; The soldier’s speech; The secretarie’s speech; The squyre’s speach. These are the speeches written by Bacon for a Device presented by the Earl of Essex on the Queen’s day, 1595. 7 The principal difference between this copy and that at Lambeth, from which the printed copy was taken, is that this does not contain “The Squire’s speach in the tilt-yard,” with which the other begins, and does contain a short speech from the Hermit, “the Hermitt’s first speach” which seems to be a reply to it. It is possible that the beginning has been lost, as any number of sheets may have dropped out at this place, without leaving any evidence of the fact. The other differences are not material, though here and there a better reading is suggested.
6. For the Earle of Sussex at ye tilt an: 96. This is a speech made to be spoken at one of these Court triumphs, and is written in the artificial style which it was the fashion to affect in them; which makes it the more difficult to supply the lost words; but it is addressed to the Queen and meant apparently to convey an apology for the absence of the Earl of Essex, who was very likely keeping aloof in one of his fits of discontent. A letter without any heading or signature, but a very good copy (much better than that printed in the Cabala, which is full of blunders) of the letter to Elizabeth, dissuading her from marrying the Duke of Anjou, and commonly attributed to Sir Philip Sidney. A copy, imperfect both at the beginning and the end, of the well-known tract called Leicester’s Commonwealth. It begins with the words “A third reason of this manner of this Lady’s death may be,” and ends in the middle of the paragraph relating to the daughters of John of Gaunt.

 

This brings us to the end of the volume; the last leaf being part of the outside sheet, which appears to have been the only cover the volume ever had, and of which the other half forms the title page, here given in facsimile. This leaf has suffered from fire like the rest. But before that, it had had the ill luck to be so used by some idle penman, either for trial of his pens, or for experiments in handwriting, or for mere relief from idleness, that it is difficult to make out what its proper contents were. At the top, however, distinguished from the rest by ink of the same colour with the earlier portions of the MS., may be clearly read the words which I have chosen for a title page, viz.

 

 

As each unwilling portal yields him way,

Through little vents and crannies of the place

The wind wars with his torch to make him stay,

And blows the smoke of it into his face,

Extinguishing his conduct in this case;

But his hot heart, which fond desire doth scorch,

Puffs forth another wind that fires the torch,

 

And, being lighted, by the light he spies

Lucretia’s glove, wherein her needle sticks.

He takes it from the rushes were it lies,

And, gripping it, the needle his finger pricks,

As who should say, “This glove to wanton tricks

Is not inured; return again in haste:

Thou seest our mistresss’ ornaments are chaste.”

Revealing day through every cranny spies,

And seems to point her out 13 where she sits weeping.

To whom she sobbing speaks: “O eye of eyes,

Why pry’st thou through my window? Leave thy peeping, 14

Mock with thy tickling 15 beams eyes that are sleeping.

Brand 16 not my forehead with thy piercing light,

For day hath naught to do 17 what’s done by night.”

 

This stanza ironically inverts an aubade, in which a lover urges day not to break in order to prolong the pleasures of the night. 18

 

or

 

Multis annis jam transactis

Nulla fides est in pactis,

Mell in ore, verba lactis;

Fell in corde, fraus in factis.

 

Rough translation: Nevill, Nevill, no vile intentions, many years have I transacted, no faith in the agreement, honey in mouth and milky words, cunning in heart and false in practise.

 

Burgoyne:

This verse was known to Anthony Bacon, for a letter from Rodolphe Bradley has been preserved, in which he writes “Your gracious speeches concerninge the gettinge of a prebendshippe for me…be the words of a faithfull friende and not of a courtiour, who hath Mel in ore et verba lactis, sed fel in corde et fraus in factis.” This letter is dated April 2, 1597; which is about the date suggested for the writing of the manuscript. 19

 

Spedding’s account:

And most of the rest appear to be merely exercises in writing th or sh. The facsimile represents the original very exactly in everything except the stains on the paper, and the curious reader can study for himself the history of the scribble. But the only thing, so far as I can see, which requires any particular notice, is the occurrence in this way of the name of William Shakespeare; and the value of that depends in a great degree upon the date of the writing; which I fear cannot be determined with any approach to exactness. All I can say is that I find nothing either in these later scribbling, or in what remains of the book itself, to indicate a date later than the reign of Elizabeth.

 

Burgoyne:

The list of contents on the outside page shows that the manuscript originally contained a copy of Bacon’s Essays. The first edition of these appeared in 1597, but they were circulated in manuscript several years prior to that date. Bacon in his Epistle Dedicatorie to the first edition, dated January 30, 1597, complaining of some piratical publisher who contemplated printing them without his consent, writes as follows: “I doe nowe like some that haue an Orcharde ill neighbored, that gather their fruit before it is ripe, to preuent stealing. These fragments of my conceites were going to print. Therefore I helde it best discreation to publish them my selfe as they passed long agoe from my pen.” This letter points to the extensive circulation of the essays in manuscript form, which would cease on their issue as a book. They were printed in January 1597, and again in 1598, and so were easily to be procured in book form after February, 1597. This appears to fix the date of the manuscript as about that period, for it is not reasonable to suppose that the expensive and imperfect method of copying in manuscript would be continued after the printed editions had appeared.

The same argument applies to the plays of Rychard II., and Rychard III, which are included in the list of contents. These also were first printed in 1597, and issued at a published price of sixpence each. It seems, therefore, reasonable to conclude that the manuscript was written not later than January 1597, and it seems more probable that no part of the manuscript was written after 1596. Corroboration for this approximate date is obtained from the composition of the various parts of the manuscript.

 

• The first item, Of Tribute, was written by Bacon for a masque or device played in 1592.
• The Controversies of the Church of England, was written in 1589.
• The Letter to a French gent. was written between 1589 and 1590.
• The Speeches of the Hermit, the Soldier, the Secretary, and the Squire, were spoken in a masque performed in 1595.
• The Earl of Sussex’s speech was spoken “an. [15]96.”
• The Letter of Sir Philip Sydney to Queen Elizabeth was written about 1580.

The stinging political pamphlet, Leicester’s Commonwealth, part of which concludes the manuscript in its present state, was printed secretly on the Continent in 1584. We know that its circulation was forbidden, the copies seized and the printers prosecuted. This being so, there would be difficulty in obtaining the printed book in England, and it was therefore necessary to continue to produce manuscript copies of the pamphlet.

 

Spedding’s account:

And if so, it is probably one of the earliest evidences of the growth of Shakespeare’s personal fame as a dramatic author; the beginning of which cannot be dated much earlier than 1598. It was not till 1597 that any of his plays appeared in print; and though the earliest editions of Richard II., Richard III., and Romeo and Juliet all bear that date, his name is not on the title page of any of them. They were set forth as plays which had been “lately,” or “publicly,” or “often with great applause,” acted by the Lord Chamberlain’s servants. Their title to favour was their popularity as acting plays at the Globe; and it was not till they came to be read as books that it occurred to people unconnected with the theatre to ask who wrote them. It seems, however, that curiosity was speedily and effectually excited by the publication; for in the very next year a second edition of both the Richards appeared with the name of William Shakespeare on the title page; and the practice was almost invariably followed by all publishers on like occasions afterwards. We may conclude, therefore, that it was about 1597 that play-goers and readers of plays began to talk about him, and that his name would naturally present itself to an idle penman in want of something to use his pen upon. What other inferences will be drawn from its appearance on the cover of this manuscript by those who start with conviction that Bacon and not Shakespeare was the author of Richard II., and Richard III., I cannot say; but to myself the fact which I have mentioned seems quite sufficient to account for the phenomenon.

At the present time, if the waste leaf on which a law-stationer’s apprentice tries his pens were examined, I should expect to find on it the name of the poet, novelist, dramatic author, or actor of the day, mixed with snatches of the last new song, and scribbling of “My dear Sir,” “Yours sincerely,” and “This Indenture witnesseth.” And this is exactly the sort of thing which we have here. I think I am in a condition to assert that there is no trace of Bacon’s own penmanship in any part of the volume; and the name of Shakespeare is spelt in every case as it was always printed in those days, and not as he himself in any known case ever wrote it. Of the history of the manuscript all that is known was communicated to me by Mr. John Bruce, last August, and I give it in his own words:

 

Bruce:

Up to about two years ago, there had remained at Northumberland House, for a long time, two black boxes of considerable size, presumed to contain papers, but nobody knew of the boxes having ever been opened, or could give any information respecting their history, or tell what kind of papers they contained. These boxes were opened at the time I have indicated, and the contents, which turned out to be papers, as had been supposed, were taken out that I might inspect them. I did so in the month of August 1867. I found them to be of a very miscellaneous character, many of them more or less connected with the history of the Percys, and others of a more general historical interest. Upon some of them were found notes in reference to their contents, written by the hand of Bishop Percy, the editor of the Reliques, who was domestic chaplain at Northumberland House from about 1765 to 1782. He occupied apartments in the House, and gave considerable attention to the old papers belonging to the family. It is probable that he looked through all the papers now under consideration, and that it was under his direction that they were placed in the boxes alluded to.

Among the papers taken out of these boxes I found the transcripts of the papers of Bacon. They formed part of a miscellaneous collection, or unbound volume, of transcripts, containing among other things a copy of Leicester’s Commonwealth and other pamphlets and documents relating to the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Looking hastily at the Bacon transcripts, I saw at one some matter which I recollected as already in print. Other parts of them seemed new to me. I mentioned this circumstance at the time to some members of the family of the Duke of Northumberland, who took an interest in what it was about. I pointed it out as a subject for further inquiry, and at the same time directed attention to the oddity of the recurrence and combination of the names of Bacon and Shakespeare in the scribble on the fly-lead of the MS. A good many of the papers taken out of the boxes had been subjected to the action of fire. Their edges were found burnt and singed in the same way as the Bacon transcripts. Among the papers thus damaged was a collection of transcripts of accounts of public ceremonials, such as royal marriages, funerals, and coronations. With this collection was found a paper on which was written, in a hand of the last century, perhaps that of Bishop Percy, although larger than his ordinary hand, a memorandum that those papers relating to ceremonials had been purchased at “Anstis’s sale,” which I understood to allude to the sale of the MSS., of the two Garters Anstis, the father and son, which took place in 1768.

This memorandum seemed to point out the possibility that the Bacon transcripts might have come to Northumberland House in the same manner as those relating to ceremonials. I thought it right therefore to endeavour to inspect a copy of the Anstis sale catalogue. For a considerable time I was unsuccessful. There is no copy at the British Museum, nor at the Society of Antiquaries, nor in several other likely places. Ultimately one was found at the College of Arms. Unfortunately, like most of the sale catalogues of that period, the lots are described in terms so general and unprecise that it is quite impossible to say what may not have been included under words so vague. Certainly the Bacon MS., is not directly mentioned. In a miscellaneous collection of papers, thrown together into one lot, there is mention of a copy of his argument, De rege inconsulto; and in the course of the catalogue there are several copies of Leicester’s Commonwealth, but they do not occur in lots which can be identified with the MS., you are dealing with, but rather the contrary. What I have stated seems to lead to the conclusion that the papers were deposited in boxes after 1768. That inference is strengthened by the circumstance that the Anstis MS., is so much injured by fire that, its contents not being highly valuable, it is unlikely that it would have been bought for the Ducal Library in its burnt condition. The same conclusion is rendered more probable by the circumstance that there occurred a fire in Northumberland House on March 18, 1780, which destroyed a very considerable part of the front towards Charing Cross, 20 including the apartments occupied by Dr. Percy, then Dean of Carlisle. The Gent. Mag. of the day takes pains to inform its readers that “the greatest part of the Dean’s invaluable library was fortunately preserved.” It says nothing of any MSS., of the Duke’s, but I think we may safely infer that in all probability this was the fire in which the Anstis MSS., the Bacon transcript, and several other manuscripts were injured; and if so, that they were not put into the black boxes until after March 1780.

We may also I think find another limit. Dr. Percy was in 1782 appointed Bishop of Dromore, where he continually resided 21 from his appointment to his death in 1811. The putting these papers into the boxes, which clearly took place after the fire in 1780, looks very like the act of Dr. Percy when taking leave of Northumberland House and about to remove to Dromore. From 1782 to 1867 the history of these papers is pretty clear; I will only add that nothing has been done with them since they were found, except that the burnt and singed edges have been carefully repaired by a trustworthy person accustomed to that kind of work, and very skilful in it.

 

From a letter to me, dated August 14, 1869.

With regard to the portion of this manuscript now printed, I may observe that though the fist ten pages contain all that is absolutely new, its full value would not have been realised without an exhibition of the whole together, for those parts which have hitherto been read separately as substantive compositions will be found to acquire something of a new character from the context. If “To be or not to be,” or “All the world’s a stage,” had been found among Shakespeare’s papers and published as lines of his own, anybody can understand what a different effect they would have had, and how unexpected an aspect of Shakespeare’s mind they would have seemed to reveal.

 

Burgoyne:

The word “ffrauncis” been twice written (the second entry being upside down 22 and over the first) as if by this device it had been intended to emphasise the name.

 

Spedding’s account:

In a less degree, but in the same way, an oration in praise of knowledge or of the Queen, is one thing if spoken in a man’s own person, another if only invented by him as part of a dramatic entertainment. And though I do not know that either of these contains anything which Bacon would not have been himself prepared to stand by and maintain in earnest, yet in a case where the business is amusement and the occasion a compliment, the liberties of rhetoric cannot be denied to what is in fact a rhetorical exhibition. Now among the exercises prescribed for the rhetorician, is one of which all these orations afford some example. In treating of the Desiderata in that art, 23 Bacon approves of Cicero’s recommendation that the forensic orator should provide himself with commonplaces, in which all questions of ordinary occurrence should be argued and handled on either side; but desires to extend it to other departments of oratory. “I would have all topics,” he says, “which there is frequent occasion to handle (whether they relate to proofs and refutations, or to persuasions and dissuations, or to praise and blame) studied and prepared before hand; and not only so, but the case exaggerated both ways with the utmost force of the wit, and urged unfairly, as it were, and quite beyond the truth.”

It was as an Essay towards the supply of this deficiency that he drew up his Antitheta Rerum; in which the arguments both for and against, on a variety of topics, are packed into short and sharp sentences, “to be as skeins or bottoms of thread, to be unwinded at large when they come to be used.” But they are for the use of the advocate, not of the judge: and these rival orations of A, B, C, and D are in like manner to be regarded as ingenious pleadings; exercises in the art of making the best or the worst of a thing; not necessarily expressions of Bacon’s personal opinion or ultimate judgment, such as we have it in the Essays, the Observations on a Libel, the discourse on the Felicities of Elizabeth, and other places where he speaks in his own person.

 

 

And so Spedding ends his Introduction in his Conference of Pleasure. He inserts the facsimile of the manuscript and at the end his notes are of particular interest and help to literary students wishing to study the first folio version of the Northumberland manuscript that has been transcribed and edited (also with notes) by Frank J. Burgoyne, which are identical notes that Spedding had adjusted:

The Northumberland Manuscript from the Table of contents:

• Of Tribute, or giving what is due.
• Of tribute or giving that w^h is due. It is difficult to understand the history of this title, which is not suggested by any conspicuous expression in the work and can hardly be called descriptive of the argument. I incline to suspect that the pieces formed part of some larger entertainment, in the course of which “the payment of tribute to whom tribute was due,” may have been enjoined as a task upon one or more of the performers; and that this was Bacon’s way of discharging it.

 

It should be stated that many modern authors on the controversy issue have gained access to interpreting this manuscript as belonging to Henry Neville, and that he is the author of the Shakespearean works. Should these authors read Spedding’s Conference with Pleasure, they will no doubt have much evidence to write many books forthcoming on the subject in hoping to discredit the fact that Bacon’s signature is smeared with depth throughout the Northumberland manuscript. Turning to Alfred Dodd’s moments on the manuscript, here is what he says:

 

These orations and plays at Gray’s Inn are linked with a very remarkable manuscript volume of the Elizabethan period found by Spedding at Northumberland House, Strand in 1867, and was not made available to the general public until 1904. It is now called The Northumberland Manuscript. This once belonged to Francis Bacon and reposed in his private scrivenery. It consists of a bundle of writings, the majority of which are indisputably the work of Francis Bacon; but some of the manuscripts are missing. The forty-five remaining leaves bear no traces of stitching. Apparently the MSS., had been placed loosely inside a paper cover which had served as a Catalogue, for written down are the titles of the works that once reposed inside it.

The handwriting has been identified by T. le Merchant Douse as that of John Davies of Hereford, a scholar of Oxford University, one of Francis Bacon’s good pens, or secretaries. He was a Mason and he wrote a remarkable Sonnet to The Royall Ingenious and all Learned Knight, Sir Francis Bacon. We can therefore be quite sure that the writing on the Cover was done very deliberately to give a clue to posterity, and that there is more behind the writing than meets the eye. If the reader will refer to the illustration of the Cover he will see that the right hand side contains a list of writing in which the plays written by Francis Bacon for Gray’s Inn Revels are names and associated with other works and names which he used as pen-names. The first thing of importance to note is that the document is connected with the “dew” of Rosicrucians. The top symbol to the left with the straight line and circle is a Rosicrucian picture of The Mirror of Pallas Athene, the Sign of Prudence and Circumspection. We thus see the symbol of the Speareshaker associated with Ffrauncis Bacon and William Shakespeare. The three scrolls underneath represent the Helmets of Pallas and Pluto, which made the Rosicrucian into The Invisibles;  and the Rosicrucian Jewel of The Rose with all its deep significance. The Mirror of Pallas being directly associated with Francis and Shakespeare is in itself remarkable; but it is much more remarkable to know that this is the only time and the only place in contemporary Elizabethan documents that the two names are brought together. It is a significant fact that Francis Bacon in all his works never once mentions the name of Shakespeare. 24

 

Leaving the interesting Dodd to sail upon the bars of Times, an Essay from Sir George Greenwood’s Baconian Essays published in 1922 is added in continuation:

Mr. Spedding, therefore, carefully examined the volume in the condition in which it was when found at Northumberland House, and, as his accuracy is well known, we may be content to rely upon his evidence in this matter. At any rate it is the best that we can now get, for as Mr. Frank Burgoyne, the Librarian of the Lambeth Public Libraries (who in 1904 edited and published a transcript and colotype facsimile of the whole of the contents of the volume) informs us: “Since Mr. Spedding wrote, the manuscript has been taken to pieces and each leaf carefully inlaid in stout paper, and these have been bound up with a large paper copy of his pamphlet entitled A Conference of Pleasure. The manuscript in its present condition contains fourty-five leaves, so Mr. Spedding does not appear to have included the outside page in his enumeration. The pages are not numbered, and there are no traces of stitching, or sewing; it is therefore quite impossible even to conjecture what was the number of sheets in the original volume.” This statement will be found not unimportant when we come to consider yet another work on these old manuscripts, also published in 1904, by Mr. T. Le Marchant Dowse. Mr. Dowse is anxious to limit the original volume to a quire of twenty-four sheets. Spedding, he says, “tells us it was a quire of twenty-two sheets, [Spedding however, only says it was folded double “as in an ordinary quire of paper”] but he omits to take into account the outer sheet, which was of the same fold of paper and served as a cover; this made twenty-three sheets. Moreover he tells us leaf ten was missing (the written matter, however runs on without a break); but as leaf ten must have formed one half of a sheet, the other half, in the latter part of the MS., should also have been missing, consequently the quire “was originally a full and proper quire of twenty-four sheets.” But as I have already pointed out, Spedding evidently includes the missing leaf, which he numbers “the tenth,” in his twenty-two sheets, equally with the leaf which, as he says, “appears to have been glued or pasted in.” Mr. Dowse’s ingenious attempt to limit the volume to twenty-four sheets therefore fails, and, in the present condition of the manuscripts, the only safe conclusion is that stated by Mr. Burgoyne, viz., that “it is quite impossible even to conjecture what was the number of sheets in the original volume.”

On the outside page or cover, besides a number of very interesting scribblings, we find a list which has been generally looked upon as a table of contents of the volume as it originally existed. It runs as follows:

 

• Mr. ffrancis Bacon. Of tribute or giving what is dew. [With the four “praises” above mentioned.]
• Earle of Arundell’s letter to the Queen.
• Speaches for my lord of Essex at the tylt.
• A speach for my lord of Sussex tilt.
• Leycester’s Common Wealth. Incerto autore.
• Orations at Graies Inne revells.
• Queenes Mate [Probably Letters to the Queen’s Majesty]. By Mr. ffrancis Bacon.
• Essaies by the same author.
• Rychard the Second.
• Rychard the Third,
• Asmund and Cornelia.
• Isle of dogs frmnt [i.e. fragment] by Thomas Nashe

 

But, as Mr. Spedding points out, just above the writing, “Earle of Arundell’s letter to the Queen,” stand the words “Philipp against Mounsieur,” a title which he says seems to have been inserted afterwards, and is imperfectly legible.” This evidently refers to Sir Philip Sydney’s letter to the Queen dissuading her from marrying the Duke of Anjou, which is part of the contents of the volume as it has come down to us. The Gray’s Inn Revels are, no doubt, those of 1594–95 of which the history is related in the Gesta Grayorum. Now of this list, besides the four Discourses or “Praises,” only four items are found in the volume as is at present exists, viz., the “Speaches for my lord of Essex at the tylt”; the “Speach for my lord of Sussex at the tilt”; “Leycester’s Common Wealth,” and Sir Philip Sydney’s letter. Mr. Dowse vehemently contends that the list on the outside cover is not, and never was meant to be a “table of contents.” He asserts that all this matter could not have been either accidentally lost, or (as seems much more probable) intentionally abstracted from the volume. First, because he says the volume originally consisted of a quire and no more; but as I have already said this is a mere conjecture, which in the face of Mr. Spedding’s evidence, is quite untenable.

Secondly, because, “on the said assumption, the MS., as found, should have shown a considerable bulge, from top to bottom, alongside the fold,” and Spedding must have seen this “considerable bulge” if it had been there, and must have mentioned it if he had seen it. Mr. Dowse goes on to say that there is other “evidence on the point quite sufficient to satisfy reasonable beings,” which is an expression commonly used when a writer wishes to imply that those who do not accept his conclusions are not endowed with the reasoning faculty. Mr. Dowse’s idea of “evidence” is, as I shall show, somewhat peculiar, but in any case, I do not think many of his readers will be much impressed with the “considerable bulge,” or “the silence of Mr. Spedding” line of argument, especially as Mr. Spedding, though not mentioning the “bulge” has definitely put on record his opinion that the volume may have originally included much more matter than it now contains. It is almost certain, for example, that it contained, with the other speeches written by Bacon for Essex’s Device in 1595, The Squire’s speech in the tilt-yard, as well as the beginning and the end of Leycester’s Common Wealth. Thus Mr. Spedding, who had the great advantage of seeing the manuscripts as they were found in 1867. [As described in the Spedding section before mentioned.]

But Mr. Le Marchant Dowse will have nothing of all this. He speaks loftily of the “folly” of supposing that the list on the outside page was a table of contents. Apparently he cannot tolerate the idea that two plays of Shakespeare, before they found their way into print, should have been transcribed by the same man, and included in the same volume, with certain works of Francis Bacon. Id sane intolerandum. But if not a table of contents what is the meaning of this outside list? How did it come to be written “at all, at all”? Well, Mr. Dowse’s theory is as follows: “The supposed “quire” originally contained only the “Praises.” It came into the possession of the Earl of Northumberland. “It then came under the control of somebody (I shall name him hereafter) who jotted down at intervals the titles of other papers which he judged worth copying, or which were of interest as having reference to, or connexion with, or as having been written by, people whom he knew; but, on the one hand, he probably found it difficult to procure the papers he wanted; and meanwhile, on the other hand, papers that he had not previously thought of were unexpectedly placed at the Earl’s disposal; and these were copied as they came to hand.”

According to this theory, therefore, a scribe in the employ of the Earl of Northumberland, entrusted with a paper volume in which four speeches, composed by Bacon for Lord Essex, had been transcribed, and very carefully and beautifully transcribed, and finding these noted on the outside cover, which up to that point certainly had done duty as a “table of contents,” amuses himself by jotting down beneath, and on the same page, the titles of a number of works which he had not in his possession but which he “judged worth copying” or thought of interest, such as the orations at Gray’s Inn, and Bacon’s Essays, and Shakespeare’s plays of Richard II., and Richard III. These, on this hypothesis, he was never able to procure, and therefore their titles on the cover stood for nothing, except as reflections of his inner consciousness. But, meanwhile, other papers, “that he had not previously thought of, were unexpectedly placed at the Earl’s disposal; and these were copied as they came to hand.” This theory we are asked, nay ordered, to accept on pain of being dismissed as creatures beyond the pale of reason. Quite unappalled by that terrible threat I venture to think that Mr. Dowse’s theory is itself unreasonable. I do not think a scribe entrusted with a nobleman’s manuscript volume, in which his duty was to enter further transcripts, would be at all likely to act in such a manner. I think it far more reasonable to suppose that these works had been copied or entered, that they were originally included in the volume, the original dimensions of which it is now impossible to estimate, and that they were subsequently abstracted, probably for some very good reason. In fact I think the evidence of Mr. Spedding, the eyewitness, is a great deal better than the hypothesis and conjectures of Mr. Dowse.

But the fact is that Mr. Dowse entered upon his investigation with two preconceived ideas. In the first place his purpose was to have a tilt at the Baconians who had founded some arguments on the close juxtaposition of the names, and certain of the works, of Bacon and Shakespeare in this manuscript. And, secondly, his purpose was to find evidence for his preconceived belief that John Davies of Hereford was the “scribbler” who had written so freely on the outside page of the volume. So much Mr. Dowse, unless I much misunderstand him, himself confesses. “The following investigation” he says in his Preface, “was suggested to me by sundry mistaken notions respecting the MSS., hereinafter examined, which had found their way into print, and so had caught my eye from time to time. Mr. Dowse, as will be seen, is violently anti-Baconian, by which I mean that he is not only altogether contemptuous of “the Baconian theory,” but also that he entertains a very low conception indeed of the personal character of Francis Bacon. I think, therefore, I have correctly interpreted the meaning of the above extract. Then as to “the writer of the scribble,” he says, “in point of fact upon my first scrutiny, several years ago, of Spedding’s facsimile, I provisionally formed an opinion as to who the scribbler was.”

It will be seen, therefore, that Mr. Dowse set out to prove that the scribbler was John Davies, though, of a certainty, the bare inspection of Spedding’s facsimile of the outer page of the manuscript could not justify any belief in the matter, and could, at most, only give occasion for the merest guess.25 But before we come to the “scribbler” let us examine the scribble, and see what date we can assign to the writings. What Mr. Spedding calls “the title page,” forming half of the outside sheet, “which appears to be the only cover the volume ever had,” is covered all over with the so-called scribblings. “It contains,” says Mr. Dowse, “some two hundred entries, independently of the “Praises,” and the list of titles.” Mr. Spedding, Mr. Dowse, and Mr. Burgoyne have reproduced this leaf in facsimile, and the latter has provided us with a modern script rendering of it. It may be said to be divided into two columns. At the top of the right-hand column stands the name “Mr. ffrancis Bacon,” followed by the list of “Praises,” which again is succeeded by what Mr. Spedding has called the table of contents. At the top of the left-hand column stands the name of Nevill, twice written, and not far below it is the punning motto of the Nevill family, Ne vile velis.

“Perhaps,” says Mr. Burgoyne, “this gives a clue to the original ownership of the volume as it seems to indicate that the collection was written for or was the property of some member of the Nevill family.” It is suggested that this was Sir Henry Nevil (1564–1615), Bacon’s nephew, and a friend of Essex. Then high up, in the middle of the page, occur the words “Anthony Comfort and consorte,” which is, without doubt, as I think, an allusion to Anthony Bacon. 26 About the centre [of the page] occurs the word “honorificabiletudine” a reminiscence of the “honorificicabilitudinitatibus” of Love’s Labour’s Lost. Who was the writer of the scribble? Mr. Dowse would identify him with John Davies of Hereford, who was born a year after Shakspere of Stratford and died two years after him. This John Davies was of Magdalen College, Oxford, a poet, and, says Mr. Dowse, “a competent scholar.” He took up penmanship as a calling, and “became the most famous teacher of his age; and he taught, not only in many noble and gentle families, but in the royal family itself, for in those days not even nobles and princes were ashamed to write well.” How we could wish that William Shaksper of Stratford had been among his pupils! But what is the evidence that Davies was “the Scribbler”? Let Mr. Dowse state it in his own words: “His numerous Sonnets and other poems, as well as his many dedications, addressed to people of note, while friendly, are also respectful and manly (though he could neatly flatter): and their number shows the extent of the circle in which he moved. Within this circle, or rather a section of it, I felt myself to be, while dealing with the page of scribble; and that feeling has been amply justified out of the mouth, or rather by the pen of John Davies himself, for his works show that he was directly and closely acquainted with nearly all the persons his contemporaries there mentioned; with some indeed he was friendly and familiar. The overwhelming evidence of this fact is of itself sufficient to identify Davies as the scribbler.” This strikes one as rather curious logic.

Davies was closely acquainted with nearly all the persons mentioned in “the page of scribble.” Ergo, Davies wrote the scribble! I hardly think a judge would direct a jury to pay much attention to “evidence” of this description. I have no prepossessions whatever against John Davies of Hereford. I am perfectly willing to believe that he was “the scribbler” but unless some better proof than this can be adduced, I fear we must regard Mr. Dowse’s theory as mere hypothesis. However, Mr. Dowse tells us that he has other evidence. He refers to Davies’s “Dedicatory and Consolatory Epistle,” addressed to the ninth Earl of Northumberland, which is to be found in the Grenville Library at the British Museum. This, he says, is “with some verbal exceptions written in Davies’s beautiful courthand.” And he further tells us that “no one who has studied the scribble and then turns to that “Consolatory Epistle” can fail to recognise the same hand at a glance.” Here I am not competent to express an opinion, for I have not examined the Epistle in question, nor have I seen the original of the Northumberland MS., and even if I had inspected both I fear I should be in no better case, for nothing is more dangerous than this identification by comparison of handwriting. Anyone who has served an apprenticeship at the Bar knows how perilous it is to trust to the evidence of “expert witnesses” in this matter.

Mr. Dowse may have been a little too anxious to find the verification of his preconceived opinion, on his “first scrutiny of Spedding’s facsimile,” that Davies was the man who wrote the scribble. However the fact that Davies seems to have been for some years in the service of Henry Percy, ninth Earl of Northumberland, as teacher of his family (that is as writing master) 27 and possibly as copyist lends some probability to Mr. Dowse’s surmise. Mr. Dowse speaks in very bitter terms of Francis Bacon, perhaps unconsciously allowing his bitterness to be accentuated (as we so often find to be the case) by his abhorrence of the Baconian theory of authorship. It is, at any rate, so strong as to lead him into criticism so obviously, and indeed absurdly, unfair as to carry its own refutation with it, and to impair very seriously the value of the critic’s judgment. He assumes that Davies wrote the words “Anthony Comfort, and Consorte,” though why the writing master, who was, according to the hypothesis, in the service of the Earl of Northumberland at the time, should have made this entry it is rather difficult to conjecture. However, says Mr. Dowse, it “shows that he was aware of the relations subsisting between the two brothers that Anthony was the companion and support of Francis the spend thrift, whom to keep out of prison he impoverished himself, and then did not succeed. It also suggests a rebuke of the toadyism of Francis in selecting and, more so, grossly flattering the terrible old termagant on the throne as the “worthiest person” in preference to such a brother.” When we remember that “the praise of his soveraigne” was, with the other speeches, written in 1592, to be spoken at a Device presented by Essex before Elizabeth (the idea being, of course, to conciliate the Queen in favour of Essex, and the very fact of Bacon’s authorship being concealed), the suggestion that Davies had in his mind to rebuke Bacon for his “toadyism” because of this purely dramatic performance is, I submit, sufficiently absurd. But that is far from being the worst.