Here is a sonnet addressed to Francis Bacon in 1595 or 1596, which has never been in print before, and which was preserved by his brother Anthony. It is rather important for one word which may refer to the Shakespeare authorship.

This sonnet, which is at the Lambeth Archiepiscopal Library, was overlooked both by Birch and Spedding, or passed over by them as containing nothing of historical interest. La Jessee, who signs as responsible for the sonnet, was not a lady, as one might suppose at first sight, but was Jean de la Jessee, who was secretaire de la chambre to that Francis, Duke of Anjou, who was so long a suitor for Queen Elizabeth (1570-1581). Most likely it was while Bacon was in France in the English ambassador's suite (1576- 1579) that he made acquaintance with La Jessee. He was a man evidently fond of the Muses, for he wrote many sonnets to friends and patrons, published at Antwerp in 1582 in four volumes quarto.

What the Duke of Anjou's private secretary seems to wish to convey to Bacon is this—that his own Muse, prolific as it was, was not a learned or eloquent one, but that Bacon's Pallas had taught it better how to speak. Now, Pallas was not one of the Muses, nor had Pallas anything to do with law; what could Bacon have to do with her? Well, she sprang fully armed from the head of Jove; she was a learned goddess; she was Hastivibrans, a Shaker of the Spear or Lance; and she had a vanquished serpent (Ignorance?) at her feet in Greek sculpture. With the ancient Greeks she was looked upon as the protectress and preserver of the state; she was the personification of what the Romans called Prudentia Civilis, and what we call Political Science. Bacon set himself to be an adept at this. Can this partly explain why Bacon called himself Shakespeare?

La Jessee wrote both in French and Latin, and there are to be found also sonnets to Seigneur Pollet, (Sir Amyas Paulet, in whose train young Francis Bacon went to France for nearly three years (1576-1579) and was ambassadeur d'Angleterre, to the King of Navarre, and to Queen Elizabeth; so we may conclude on several grounds that the Duke of Anjou's secretary was fairly acquainted with court life and court fashions in England.

This French Sonnet to Francois Bacon, from its position in the bound-up volumes of Anthony Bacon's MSS., seems to have been written about 1595 or 1596, and at that date the famous Essays of Francis Bacon had not been published, nor had any literary work of much significance been put forth by him, so the expression vostre Pallas does not seem appropriate, as nothing like a Pallas fully armed had sprung from Bacon's great brain yet, as far as the world of letters knew.

Pallas is referred to in a remarkable paper, without heading, docket, or date, found in the Lambeth collection; which paper is further proved by some notes and portions of the rough draft still extant in Bacon's handwriting to be of his composition. It is clearly a part of one of the Devices which Bacon was so clever and ready in contriving. It seems to have been a sequel to some former Device of the same kind, in which Philautia, the goddess of Self-Love, had been represented as addressing some persuasion to the Queen, and is in the form of a letter (in Bacon's handwriting, and with his notes for Essex written in the margin) to the Queen.

This letter was most likely intended to come into the Device at the point where the ambassadors introduce themselves by delivering it to the Queen. It is so important for the solution of The Mystery of William Shakespeare, that it is quoted below at length:

Excellent Queen,
Making report to Pallas, upon whom Philautia depends, of my last audience with your Majesty and of the opposition I found by the feigning tongue of a disguised Squire, and also of the inclination of countenance and ear which I discerned in your Majesty rather towards my ground than to his voluntary, the Goddess allowed well of my endeavour and said no more at that time. But few days since she called me to her, and told me that my persuasions had done good, yet that it was not amiss to refresh them. I attending in silence her furder pleasure, after a little pause putting her shield before her eyes as she useth when she studieth to resolve. Better (said she) raise the siege than send continual succours, and that may be done by stratagem.

This, Philautia, shall you do. Address yourself to Erophilus. You know the rest: we shall see what answer or invention the Goddess of fools (so many times she will call Jupiter's fair daughter) will provide for him against your assailings. And then the alone Queen (so she ever terms your Majesty) will see that she hath had Philautia's first offer, and that if she reject it, it will be received elsewhere to her disadvantage.

And upon my humble reverence to depart she cleared her countenance, and said. The time makes for you. I gladly received her instructions. Only because I had negotiated with your Majesty myself I would not vouchsafe to deal with an inferior in person: but I have put them in commission that your Majesty will see can very well acquit themselves; and will at least make you sport, which Philautia for a vale desireth you to contrive out of all others' earnest, and so kisseth your serene hands, and rested,

Your Majesty's faithful remembrancer,

Philautia.

Then follows the beginning of the speech of the Hermit, a first draft only; it was afterwards entirely rewritten, and is extant in another part of the same MS., volumes, viz., in the Gibson Papers, vol. v. No. 118.

Now this rough draft of Bacon's composition was intended solely for the eyes of the Earl of Essex, who was the supposed author of the Device, andobtained apparently the whole credit for it from his contemporaries. Bacon's name seems quite kept out of our accounts of the Device and unless these autograph MSS., had been preserved and discovered, we should never have been sure that these parts of the Device were of his work and not by Essex.

Essays (XLVII): "In choice of Instruments it is better to choose men of a plainer sort...Use also such persons as affect the Business wherein they are employed, for that quickeneth much."

Francis Bacon preferred at first to write under no name at all, and to manage, if possible, so that his productions, chiefly at that time political, might be attributed to some greater celebrity. There was that early Letter of Advice to Queen Elizabeth, written in 1584/85, thought for a long time to be Lord Burghley's work, but known now to be written by Bacon.

There was the letter to Monsieur Critoy, Secretary of France, written, to all appearance, by Sir Francis Walsingham, the English Secretary, about the year 1589, but now, after many years, shown to be drawn up by Bacon, who indeed used a great part of it almost word for word in his Observations on a Libel about three years afterwards.

In Bacon's treatise De moribus interpretis he says: " Let him do his private business under a mask." Spedding has a footnote to this: "I cannot say that I clearly understand the sentence."

Bibliography: Walter Begley: Is it Shakespeare? (1903)