NAWSA GENERAL CORRESPONDENCE BACON ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH American Hdqrs. English Hdqrs. Box 211 Standing Stone Camp 27 West 44th St. Piercefield Wood New York, N.Y. Nr. Chepstow U.S.A Monmouthshire Baron Archaeological Research Harold Shafter Howard Orbille Ward Omen, M. n. Archaeologist (Dec. 1924) 1920, 1926-1930 in Piercefield Wood Decipherer Discovered "true (North- North-West') angle," Discovered Directions in and locations indicated by Bacon Bacon cipher in Sidney"Arcadia" cipher, and emblem clues, Feb. 10, Box B, WellesleyMass-tts May 17, 1926 March 22, 1932 My dear Miss Blackwell, I thought of Francis Bacon's case when I read your letter in to-day's Boston Herald.He certainly is a case in point. The press is virtually closed to this debate after having been open. This cause is quite different from the suffrage cause. I wish you were doing for it as you did for that[underlined], as a writer. Do you know of Miss Leith's Fly Leaves of St Alban? I have written for BR. [handwritten] {BACONIANA two articles on my ^3/4 successful research in Monmouthshire, one {in the Feb. 1931, and [start of underline]: The "Arbour In The Wilderness, in the current, Feb. 1932 #79.[end of underline]. I clinched the claim in that article by an account of two discoveries which check up on each other. Like Gillette Burgess in his Cross word Prize winning I seem to have the luck a "Comic" editor is expected to have where PUZZLES ARE CONCERNED. (They misconceive the problem who do not realize it is LITERARY LEGERDEMAIN that has to be dealt with to clear it up. It is a fascinating hare and hound chase, or Fox Hunt that work at Chepstow, or St Arvans N. of there. Mr. Buttrefield may have copies of Mr, Dodd's book. The Personal Poems of Francis Bacon. I am in correspondence with Mr. Dodd. He answers objections so masterfully he convinces. Mr. Butterfield of Bromfield St. may have the two circulars of Readers' Opinions (including "Lampy's"). Hoping to hear whether you are of our persuasion in this great study. Sincerely yours, Harold S. Howard *(108)XXXVIII. Be thou the Tenth Muse, ten times more in worth Than those old Nine which rhymers innovate; And He that calls on thee, Let him bring forth Eternal Numbers[underlined] to outlive long date The Shakespeare Myth BY SIR EDWIN DURNING-LAWRENCE, BT. MR. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARES COMEDIES, HISTORIES, & TRAGEDIES. Published according to the True Originall Copies. M? D? S? London] LONDON Printed by Isaac Iaggard, and Ed. Blount. 1623. GAY & HANCOCK, LTD., 12 & 13, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C. 1912. THE FIVE HUNDREDTH THOUSAND. THE FRONT OF THE LEFT ARM THE BACK OF THE LEFT ARM From the title page of the First Folio edition of the Shakespeare plays, published in 1623 arranged Tailor fashion, shoulder to shoulder, as in the Gentleman's Tailor Magazine, April, 1911 The Shakespeare Myth HALLIWELL-PHILLIPPS says: "It was not till the Jubilee of 1769 that the tendency to the fabrication of Shakespeare anecdotes and relics at Stratford Museum became manifest. All kinds of deception have since been practised there." The Folio of the Plays, 1623. IT is now universally admitted that the Plays known as Shakespeare's are the greatest "Birth of Time," the most wonderful product of the human mind which the world has ever seen, that they evince the ripest classical scholarship, the most perfect knowledge of Law, and the most intimate acquaintance with all the intricacies of the highest Court life. The Plays as we know them, appeared in the Folio, published in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare's death in 1616. This volume contains thirty-six plays. Of this number only eight are substantially in the form in which they were printed in Shakespeare's lifetime. Six are greatly improved. Five are practically rewritten, and seventeen are not known to have been printed before Shakespeare's death, although thirteen plays of similar names are registered or in some way referred to. The following particulars are mainly derived from Reed's "Bacon our Shakespeare," published 1902. The spelling of the first Folio of 1623 has, however, been strictly followed. The Eight which are printed in the Folio substantially as they originally appeared in the Quartos are:- 1- Much adoo about Nothing. 2- Loves Labour lost* 3- Midsommer Nights Dreame. 4- The Merchant of Venice. 5- The First part of King Henry the fourth. 6- The Second part of K. Henry the fourth. 7- Romeo and Juliet. 8- The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida. * Note.––The scene of the play is Navarre, and three of the characters are Biron, Dumayne, and Boyet. In 1586 from the court of Navarre was issued a passport for Bacon's brother Anthony signed Biron, a passport for Anthony's servant Peter Browne signed Dumayne, and also a second passport for Peter Browne, signed on behalf of, Boyet. (British Museum Add. MSS. 4125). Note.–This has a new title and a Prologue in the Folio. This extremely learned play which we are told was never "clapper-clawd with the palmes of the vulgar..... or sullied with the smoaky breath of the multitude, "has recently been shewn by Mrs. Hinton Stewart to be a satire upon the court of King James I. -4- The Six which have been greatly improved are:- 1. The Life & death of Richard the second. Corrections throughout. 2. The Third part of King Henry the sixt. New title, 906 new lines, and many old lines retouched. 3. The Life & Death of Richard the Third. 193 new lines added, 2000 lines retouched. 4. Titus Andronicus. One entire new scene added. 5. The Tragedy of Hamlet. Many important additions and omissions. 6. King Lear. 88 new lines, 119 lines retouched. The Five which have been practically rewritten are:- 1. The Merry Wives of Windsor. 1,081 new lines, the text rewritten. 2. The Taming of the Shrew. New title, 1,000 new lines added, and extensive revision. 3. The Life and Death of King John. New title, 1,000 new lines including one entire new scene. The dialogue rewritten. 4. The Life of King Henry the Fift. New title, the choruses and two new scenes added. Text nearly doubled in length. 5. The Second part of King Hen. the Sixt. New title, 1,139 new lines, and 2,000 old lines retouched. (The practice of false dating books of the Elizabethan period was not uncommon, instances of as much as thirty years having been discovered. It has been proved by Mr. A. W. Pollard, of the British Museum; by Mr. W. W. Greg. Librarian of Trinity College, Cambridge; and by Prof. W.J. Neidig, that four of these, viz., "A Midsommer Nights Dreame," and "The Merchant of Venice," both dated 1600, and "King Lear," and "Henry the Fift." both dated 1608, were in fact printed in 1619, three years after Shakespeare's death.) The Thirteen which seem not to have been printed before Shakespeare's death, although plays of somewhat similar names are registered or in some way referred to, are:- 1. The Tempest. 2. The First part of King Henry the Sixt. 3. The two Gentlemen of Verona. 4. Measure for Measure. 5. The Comedy of Errours. 6. As you Like it. 7. All is well, that Ends well. 8. Twelfe-Night, or what you will. 9. The Winters Tale. 10. The Life and death of Julius Caesar . 11. The Tragedy of Macbeth. 12. Anthony and Cleopater. 13. Cymbeline King of Britaine. 5 The Four which seem neither to have been printed nor referred to till after Shakespeare's death are*:- 1. The Life of King Henry the Eight. 2. The Tragedy of Coriolanus. 3. Timon of Athens. 4. Othello, the Moore of Venice. Of the above plays, most of those which were printed in Shakespeare's lifetime originally appeared anonymously; indeed, no play bore Shakespeare's name until New Place, Stratford-on-Avon, had been purchased for him and £1,000 given to him in 1597. The first play to bear the name of W. Shakespere was Loves Labors Lost, which appeared in the following year––1598. Stratford, to which Shakespeare was sent in 1597, was at that period much farther from London for all practical purposes than Canada is to-day, and Shakespeare did not go there for week ends, but he permanently resided there, only very occasionally visiting London, when he lodged at Silver Street with a hairdresser named Mountjoy. It is exceedingly important and informing to remember that Shakespeare's name never appeared upon any play until he had been permanently sent away from London, and that his wealth was simply the money ––£1,000–– given to him in order to induce him to incur the risk entailed by allowing his name to appear upon the plays. Such risk was by no means inconsiderable, because Queen Elizabeth was determined to punish the author of Richard the Second, a play which greatly incensed her; she is reported to have said, "Seest thou not that I am Richard the Second?" There is no evidence that Shakespeare ever earned so much as ten shillings in any one week while he lived in London. At Stratford, Shakespeare sold corn, malt, etc., and lent small sums of money, and indeed, was nothing more than a petty tradesman, a fact of which we are quite clearly informed in "The Great Assises holden at Parnassus," printed in 1645, where Bacon is put as "Chancellor of Parnassus," i.e., greatest of the world's poets, and Shakespeare appears as "the writer of weekly accounts." This means that the only literature for which Shakespeare was responsible consisted of his small *Note–– The above very strongly confirms Mrs. Gallup's reading of the Cypher, viz: that there are twenty-two NEW plays in the Folio. The Tempest, with Timon of Athens and Henry VIII, seems to be largely concerned with the story of Bacon's fall from his high offices in 1621, and Emile Montégut, writing in the "Revue des Deux Mondes" of August, 1865, says that the Tempest is evidently the author's literary testament. 6 tradesman's accounts sent out weekly by his clerk; because, as will be shewn presently, Shakespeare was totally unable to write a single letter of his own name. Let us now return to the Folio of Shakespeare's plays, published in 1623. On the title page appears a large half-length figure drawn by Martin Droeshout, which is known as the Authentic (i.e., the authorised) portrait of Shakespeare. Martin Droeshout, I should perhaps mention, is scarcely likely to have ever seen Shakespeare, as he was only 15 years of age when Shakespeare died. On the cover of this pamphlet will be found a reduced facsimile of the title page of the Folio of 1623. It is almost inconceivable that people with eyes to see should have looked at this so-called portrait for 287 years without perceiving that it consists of a ridiculous, putty-faced mask, fixed upon a stuffed dummy clothed in a trick coat.* The "Tailor and Cutter" newspaper, in its issue of 9th March, 1911, stated that the figure, put for Shakespeare, in the 1623 Folio, was undoubtedly clothed in an impossible coat composed of the back and the front of the same left arm. And in the following April the "Gentleman's Tailor Magazine," under the heading of a "Problem for the Trade," prints the two halves of the coat put tailor fashion, shoulder to shoulder, as shewn here on page 2, and says:- "It is passing strange that something like three centuries should have been allowed to elapse before the tailor's handiwork should have been appealed to in this particular manner. "The special point is that in what is known as the authentic portrait of William Shakespeare, which appears in the celebrated first Folio edition, published in 1623, a remarkable sartorial puzzle is apparent. "The tunic, coat, or whatever the garment may have been called at the time, is so strangely illustrated that the right-hand side of the forepart is obviously the left-hand side of the backpart; and so gives a harlequin appearance to the figure, which it is not unnatural to assume was intentional, and done with express object and purpose. "Anyhow, it is pretty safe to say that if a Referendum of the trade was taken on the question whether the two illustrations shown above (exactly as our illustration on page 2) *Note–– This stuffed dummy is surmounted by a mask with an ear attached to it not in the least resembling any possible human ear, because, instead of being hollowed, it is rounded out something like the back side of a shoehorn, so as to form a sort of cup to cover and conceal any real ear that might be behind it. 7 represent the foreparts of the same garment, the polling would give an unanimous vote in the negative." Facing the title page of the 1623 first Folio of the plays, on which the stuffed and masked dummy appears, is the following description (of which I give a photo-facsimile), which, as it is signed B. I., is usually ascribed to Ben Jonson:- To the Reader. This Figure, that thou here seest put, It was for gentle Shakespeare cut; Wherein the Grauer had a strife with Nature, to out-doo the life: O, could he but haue drawne his wit As well in brass, as he hath hit His face; the Print would then surpasse All, that vvas euer vvrit in brasse. But, since he cannot, Reader, looke Not on his Picture, but his Booke. B.I. If my readers will count all the letters in the above, including the four v's, which are used instead of the two w's, they will find that there are 287 letters, a masonic number often repeated throughout the Folio. My book, "Bacon is Shakespeare," was published in 1910 (i.e., 287 years after 1623), and tells for the first time the true meaning of these lines. B.I. never calls the ridiculous dummy a portrait, but describes it as "the Figure," "put for" (i.e., instead of), and as "the Print," and as "his Picture," and he distinctly tells us to look not at his (ridiculous) Picture, but (only) at his Booke. It has always been a puzzle to students who read these verses why B. I. lavished such extravagant praise upon what looks so stiff and wooden a figure, about which Gainsborough, writing in 1768, says: "Damn the original picture of him... for I think a stupider face I never beheld except D... k's ... it is impossible that such a mind and ray of heaven, could shine with such a face and pair of eyes." To those capable of properly reading the lines, B.I. clearly tells the whole story. He says, "The Graver had a strife with Nature to out-doo the life." In the New English Dictionary, edited by Sir James Murray, we find more than six hundred words beginning with "out." Every one of these, with scarcely an exception, must, in order to be fully understood, be read reversed; outfit is fit out, outfall is fall out, outburst is burst out, etc. Outlaw does not mean outside the law, but lawed out by some legal process. "Out-doo" therefore must here mean "do out," and was continually used for hundreds of years in that sense. Thus in the "Cursor Mundi," 8 written in the Thirteenth Century, we read that Adam was "out-done" [of Paradise]. In 1603 Drayton published his "Bartons' Wars," and in Book V. s. li. we read, For he his foe not able to withstand, Was ta'en in battle and his eyes out-done. B.I. therefore tells us that the Graver has done out the life, that is, covered it up and masked it. The Graver has done this so cleverly that for 287 years (i.e., from 1623 till 1910) learned pedants and others have looked at the dummy without perceiving the trick that had been played upon them. B.I. then proceeds to say: –– "O, could he but have drawne his wit as well in brasse, as he hath hit his face." Hit, at that period, was often used as the past participle of hide, with the meaning hid or hidden, exactly as we find in Chaucer, in "The Squieres Tale," where we read, ii. 512, etc., Right as a serpent hit him under floures Til he may seen his tyme for to byte. This, put into modern English prose, means, Just as a serpent hid himself under the flowers until he might see his time to bite. I have already explained how B. I. tells the reader not to look at the picture, but at the book; perhaps the matter may be still more clear if I give a paraphrase of the verses. TO THE READER The dummy that thou seest set here Was put instead of Shake-a-speare; Wherein the graver had a strife To extinguish all of Nature's life. O, could he but have drawn his mind As well as he's concealed behind His face; the Print would then surpasse All, that was ever writ in brasse But since he cannot, do not looke On his mask'd Picture, but his Booke. " Do out" appears as the name of the little instrument something like a pair of snuffers, called a "douter," which was formerly used to extinguish candles. Therefore, I have correctly substituted "extinguish" for "out-do". At the beginning I have substituted "dummy" for "figure" because we are told that the figure is "put for" (that is, put instead of) Shakespeare. "Wit" in these lines means absolutely the same as "mind" which I have used in its place, because I feel sure that it refers to the fact that upon the miniature of Bacon in his eighteenth year, painted by Hilliard in 1578, we read:–– "Si tabula daretur digna animum mallem," the translation of which is–– "If one could but paint his mind!" 9 This important fact which can neither be disputed nor explained away, viz, that the figure upon the title page of the first Folio of the plays in 1623 put to represent Shakespeare is a doubly left-armed and stuffed dummy, surmounted by a ridiculous putty-faced mask, disposes once and for all of any idea that the mighty plays were written by the drunken, illiterate clown of Stratford-on-Avon, and shows us quite clearly that the name "Shakespeare" was used as a left-hand, a pseudonym, behind which the great author, Francis Bacon, wrote securely concealed. In his last prayer, Bacon says, "I have though in a despised weed procured the good of all men," while in the 76th "Shakespeare" sonnet he says:- Why write I still all one, ever the same, And keepe invention in a noted weed. That every word doth almost sel my name Shewing their birth, and where they did proceed. Weed signifies disguise, and is used in that sense by Bacon in his "Henry VII," where he says, "This fellow . . . clad himself like an Hermite and in that weede wandered about the countrie." It is doubtful if at that period it was possible to discover a meaner disguise, a more "despised weed," than the pseudonym of William Shakespeare, of Stratford-on-Avon, Gentleman. Bacon also specially refers to his own great "descent to the Good of Mankind" in the wonderful prayer which is evidently his dedication of the "Immortal Plays." THIS IS THE FORM AND RULE OF OUR ALPHABET:- May God, the Creator, Preserver, and Renewer of the Universe protect and govern this work, both in its ascent to his Glory, and in its descent to the Good of Mankind, for the sake of his Mercy and good Will to Men, through his only Son (Immanuel). God with us. In the "Promus," which is the name of Bacon's notebook now in the MSS. department of the British Museum, Bacon tells us that "Tragedies and Comedies are made of one Alphabet." His beautiful prayer, described as the Form and Rule of our Alphabet, was first published in 1679 in "Certaine Genuine Remains of Sir Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam and Viscount St. Albans," where it appears as a fragment of a book written by the Lord Verulam and entituled, "The Alphabet of Nature." In the preface we are told that this work is commonly said to be lost. "The Alphabet of Nature" is, of course, "The Immortal Plays," known to us as Shakespeare's, which hold "The Mirror up to Nature," and are now no longer lost, but restored to their great author, Francis Bacon. 10 Bacon shewn by Contemporary Title Pages to be the Author of the Shakespeare Plays. I HAVE shewn on pp. 6 to 9 that the title page of the 1623 Folio of the Plays known as Shakespeare's is adorned with a supposed portrait of Shakespeare, which is, in fact, a putty-faced mask supported on a stuffed dummy wearing a coat with two left arms, to inform us that the Stratford clown was a "left-hand," a "dummy," a "pseudonym," behind which the great Author was securely concealed. This fact disposes once and for all of the Shakespeare myth, and I will now proceed to prove by a few contemporary evidences that the real author was Francis Bacon. I place before the reader on page 11 a photographically enlarged copy of the engraved titled page of Bacon's work, the De Augmentis, which was published in Holland in 1645. De Augmentis is the Latin name of the work which appeared in English as the Advancement of Learning. This same engraved title page was for more than one hundred years used for the title page of Vol. I. of various editions of Bacon's collected works in Latin, which were printed abroad. The same subject, but entirely redrawn, was also employed for other foreign editions of the De Augmentis, but nothing in any way resembling it was printed in England until quite recently, when photo-facsimile copies were made of it for the purpose of discussing the authorship of the "Shakespeare" plays. In this title page we see in the foreground on the right of the picture (the reader's left) Bacon seated with his right hand in brightest light resting upon an open book beneath which is a second book (shall we venture to say that these are the De Augmentis and the Novum Organum?), while with his left-hand in deepest shadow, Bacon is putting forward a mean man, who appears to the careless observer to be running away with a third book. Let us examine carefully this man. We shall then perceive that he is clothed in a goat skin. The word tragedy is derived from the Greek word tragodos, which means an actor dressed in a goat skin. We should also notice that the man wears a false breast to enable him to represent a woman; there were no women actors at the time of Shakespeare's plays. The man, therefore, is intended to represent the tragic muse. With his left hand, and with his left hand only, he grips strongly a clasped (i.e., sealed, concealed) book, which by the crossed lines upon its side (then, as now, the symbol of a mirror) is shewn to be the "Mirror up to Nature," the "Book of the Immortal Plays," 11 FR. BACONIS De VLAM Angliæ Cancellarii DE AVGMENTIS SCIENTIARVM Lib. IX LVGD. BATAVORVM Apud Franciscum Moiardum Et Adrian Wijngaerde. Anno 1645. PHOTO-FACSIMILE OF THE TITLE PAGE OF BACON'S DE AUGMENTIS, 1645 12 known to us under the name of Shakespeare, which together with Bacon's De Augmentis and his Novum Organum, makes up the "Great Instauration," by which Bacon has "procured the good of all men." Having very carefully considered this plate of the title page of the De Augmentis, 1645, let us next examine the plate on page 13, which is the title page that forms the frontispiece of Bacon's Henry VII. in the Latin edition, printed in Holland in 1642. This forms, with the 1645 edition of the De Augmentis, one of the series of Bacon's collected works which were continually reprinted for upwards of a hundred years. In this title page of Henry VII. we see the same "left-handed" story most emphatically repeated. On the right of the engraving––the reader's left––upon the higher level, Francis Bacon stands in the garb of a philosopher with grand Rosicrucian rosettes upon his shoes. By his side is a knight in full armor, who, like himself, touches the figure with his right hand. On the "left" side of the picture upon the lower level we see that the same Francis Bacon, who is now wearing actor's boots, is stopping the wheel with the shaft of a spear which the "left-handed" actor grasps (or shall we say "shakes"), while with his "left hand" he points to the globe. This actor wears one spur only, and that upon his "left" boot, and his sword is also girded upon him "left-handedly." Above this "left-handed" actor's head, upon the wheel which the figure is turning with her "left" hand, we see the emblems of the plays; the mirror up to nature (observe the crossed lines to which we called attention in reference to the crossed lines upon the book in the title page of the De Augmentis, 1645)–– the rod for the back of fools–– "the bason that receives your guilty blood" (see Titus Andronicus v. 2) which is here the symbol of tragedy, –– and the fool's rattle or bauble. That the man is not a knight, but is intended to represent an actor, is manifest from his wearing actor's boots, a collar of lace, and leggings trimmed with lace, and having his sword girded on the wrong side, while he wears but one gauntlet and that upon his "left" hand. That he is a Shake-speare actor is also evident because he is shaking the spear which is held by Bacon. He is likewise a shake-spur actor, as is shewn by his wearing one spur only, which is upon his "left" boot. In other emblematic writings and pictures we similarly get "Shakespur," meaning "Shake-speare." The reader cannot fail to remark how perpetually it is shewn that everything connected with the plays is performed "left-handedly," that is, "underhandedly" and "secretly in 13 Franc Baconi DE VERULAMIO HISTORIA REGNI HENRICI SEPTIMI Angliæ Regis OPUS VERE POLITICUM LVG. BATAVOR APUD FRANC. HACKIUM ANNO 1642 Cornelis v. Dalen Sculp. PHOTO-FACSIMILE OF THE TITLE PAGE OF BACON'S HENRY VII., 1642 -14- Shadow.” On the right-hand side upon the higher level the figure with her right hand holds above Bacon’s head a salt box. This is in order to teach us that Bacon was the “wisest of mankind,” because we are plainly told in the “Continuation of Bacon’s New Atlantis” (which was published in 1660, but of which the author who is called “R. H., Esq.,‘’ has never been identified) that in “our Heraldry” ( which refers to the symbolic drawings that appear mostly as the frontpieces of certain books such as those before the reader) “If for wisdom she ( the virgin) holds a salt.” But the reader will perceive that in her right hand she also holds something else above Bacon’s head. Only a considerable knowledge of Emblems and Emblem books enables me to inform my readers what this very curious object represents. It is absolutely certain that what she holds above Bacon’s head is a “ bridle without a bit,” which is here put for the purpose of instructing us that the future age is not to curb and muzzle and destroy Bacon’s reputation. This emblem tells us that, as the ages roll on, Bacon will be unmuzzled and crowned with everlasting fame. How do we know so much as this? In February, 1531, the first edition of the most important of all Emblem books viz., “ Alciati’s Emblems,” was published, and in that book there is shewn a hideous figure of Nemesis holding a bridle in which is a tremendous “ bit” to destroy “improba verba,” false reputations. A little more than a hundred years later, viz., in 1638, Baudoin, who had translated Bacon’s essays into French, also published a book of Emblems, a task which, he tells us in the preface, he was induced to undertake by “Alciat” (printed in small letters) and by BACON (printed in capital letters). In this book of Emblems Baudoin puts opposite to Bacon’s name a fine engraving of Nemesis, but which is, in fact, a figure of Fame holding a “bridle without a bit,” of exactly the same shape as that shewn in the title page of “Henry VII.,” which is now under the reader’s eyes. I may perhaps here state that I possess books that must have belonged to a distinguished Rosicrucian who was well acquainted with Bacon’s secrets, and that in my library there is a specially printed copy of Baudoin’ should book in which this figure of Fame that is put as the Nemesis for Bacon, is purposefully printed upside down, I do not mean bound upside down, but printed upside down, the printing on the back being reversed and so reading correctly. Other books which I possess have portions similarly purposefully printed upside down to afford revelations of Bacon’s authorship to those readers who are capable of understanding symbols. This particular upside down drawing of the Nemesis placed opposite to Bacon’s name in Baudoin’s book is -15- so printed in order to emphasise the author’s meaning that the Nemesis for Bacon is to unmuzzled him and spread his fame over all the world. This “specially bound” - in contemporary binding- with Rosicrucian Emblems on the back. The figure which turns the wheel turns it with her “left” hand, while with her right hand she holds over Bacon’s head what the reader now knows to be the emblem of Wisdom and of Fame. Streaming from her head is a long lock of hair which is correctly described as “the forelock of time,” and this is to teach us that as time goes on so will Bacon’s reputation continually extend farther and farther. Bacon in his will declared that he bequeathed his “name and memory... to foreign nations and the next ages.” * Bacon knew that much time must elapse before the world would begin to recognize how much he had done for its advancement, and there is considerable evidence that he fixed upon the year 1919, which is 287 years after the year 1623, in which the Folio edition of the immortal plays, known as Shakespeare’s, first appeared. With respect to Bacon’s remarkable reference to foreign nations, we must remember that the title pages here shown and numerous other striking revelations of his authorship of the plays were never printed or published in England, but appear only in editions printed in foreign countries. I will once more repeat that the title page of the “ De Augmentis” clearly tells us that Bacon has secretly with his “ left hand” placed his great work, the “ Immortal plays,” “ the Mirror up to Nature,” in the hands of a mean actor, and that the title page of “Henry VII.” repeats the same “left-handed” story, and tells us that, while the history of Henry VII. is written in prose in Bacon’s own name, his other histories of the “ Kings of England “ are set forth at the Globe Theatre by the Shakespeare actor, concealed behind whom Bacon stands secure. In other words, that Bacon’s other histories of England will be found in the plays to which is attached the name of his pseudonym, the doubly “left-handed” and masked dummy, “William Shakespeare.” _____________________________________________________________________________________ *Note,- The following story, related by Ben Jonson himself, shows how necessary it was for Bacon to conceal his identity behind various masks:- “He [Ben Jonson] was dilated by Sir James Murray to the King, for writting something against the Scots, in a play Eastward Hoe, and voluntarily imprisonned himself with Chapman and Marston who had written it amongst them. The report, was that they should then [have] had their ears cut and noses. After their delivery, he banqueted all his friends; there was Camden, Selden, and others; at the midst of the feast his old Mother dranke to him, and shew him a paper which she had (if the sentence had taken execution) to have mixed in the prison among his drinke, which was full of lustie strong poison, and that she was no churle, she told, she was minded first to have drunk of it herself.” This was in 1605, and it is a strange and grim illustration of the dangers that best men in the Highway of Letters. 16 The Shakespeare Signatures (so-called). No scrap of writing is in existence which can by any possibility be supposed to have been written by William Shakespeare, excepting only the six (so-called) signatures. And, since every one of these supposed signatures is undoubtedly written by a law clerk, the inference that William Shakespeare, of Stratford-upon-Avon, Gentleman, was totally unable to write, seems to be incontrovertible. The first so-called signature in the order of date is the one last discovered, viz. : that at the Record Office, London. This is attached to " Answers to Interrogatories," dated May 1 1th, 1612, in a petty lawsuit, in which it appeared that William Shakespeare, of Stratford-upon-Avon, Gentleman, had occasionally lodged in Silver Street at the house of a hairdresser named Mountjoy. Among the "Answers to Interrogatories" those which were signed very carefully by Daniell Nicholas, and the " Answers to Interrogatories" from William Shakespeare, of Stratford-upon-Avon, Gentleman, which are dated May 11th, 1612, are both written in the handwriting of the same law clerk, who attached to the latter the name " Wilm Shaxpr" over a neat blot, which was probably the mark made by the illiterate "Gentleman" of Stratford, who was totally unable to write even a single letter of his own name. To those acquainted with the law script of the period it is abundantly evident that the "Wilm Shaxpr" is in the same handwriting as the body of the Answers. The next (so-called) signatures in order of date are upon the purchase deed now in the London Guildhall Library, and upon the mortgage deed of the same property, which is in the British Museum. The purchase deed is dated March 10th, 1613, and the mortgage deed is dated March 11th, 1613, but at that period, as at the present time, when part of the purchase money is left on mortgage, the mortgage deed was always dated one day after the purchase deed, and always signed one moment before it, because the owner cannot part with his property before he receives both the cash and the mortgage deed. About twenty-five years ago, I succeeded in persuading the City authorities to carry the purchase deed to the British Museum, where by appointment we met the officials there, who took the mortgage deed out of the show-case and placed it side by side with the purchase deed from Guildhall. After a long and careful examination of the two deeds, some dozen or twenty officials standing around, 17 everyone agreed that neither of the names of William Shakespeare upon the deeds could be supposed to be signatures. Recently one of the higher officials of the British Museum wrote to me about the matter, and in reply I wrote to him and also to the new Librarian of Guildhall that it would be impossible to discover a scoundrel who would venture to swear that it was even remotely possible that these two supposed signatures of William Shakespeare could have been written at the same time, in the same place, with the same pen, and the same ink, by the same hand. They are widely different, one having been written by the law clerk of the seller, the other by the law clerk of the purchaser. One of the so-called signatures is evidently written by an old man, the other is written by a young man. The deeds are not stated to be signed but only to be sealed. Next we come to the three supposed signatures upon the will, dated March 25th, 1616. Twenty or twenty-five years ago, on several occasions I examined with powerful glasses Shakespeare's will at Somerset House, where for my convenience it was placed in a strong light, and I arrived at the only possible conclusion, viz., that the supposed signatures were all written by the law clerk who wrote the body of the will, and who wrote also the names of the witnesses, all of which, excepting his own which is written in a neat modern looking hand, are in the same handwriting as the will itself. The fact that Shakespeare's name is written by the law clerk has been conclusively proved by Magdalene Thumm- Kintzel in the Leipzig Magazine, "Der Menschenkenner," of January, 1909, in which photo reproductions of certain letters in the body of the will and in the so-called signatures are placed side by side, and the evidence is conclusive that they are written by the same hand. Moreover, the will was originally drawn to be sealed, because the solicitor must have known that the illiterate householder of Stratford was unable to write his name. Subsequently, however, the word " seale" appears to have been struck out and the word "hand" written over it. People unacquainted with the rules of law are generally not aware that anyone can, by request, " sign" any person's name to any legal document, and that if such person touch it and acknowledge it, anyone can sign as witness to his signature. Moreover the will is not stated to be signed, but only stated to be " published." In putting the name of William Shakespeare three times to the will the law clerk seems to have taken considerable care to show that they were not real signatures. They are all written in law script, and the three "W's" of " William" are made in the three totally different forms in which "W's" were 18 written in the law script of that period. Excepting the “W” the whole of the first so-called signature is almost illegible, but the other two are quite clear, and show that the clerk has purposefully formed each and every letter in the two names “Shakespeare” in a different manner one from the other. It is, therefore, impossible for anyone to suppose that the three names upon the will are “signatures.” I should perhaps add that all the six so-called signatures were written by the law clerks who were excellent penmen, and that the notion that the so-called signatures are badly written has only arisen from the fact that the general public, and even many educated persons, are totally ignorant of the appearance of the law script of the period. The first of the so-called signatures, viz., that at the Record Office, London, is written with extreme ease and rapidity. Thus are for ever disproved each and every. one of the writings hitherto claimed as “signatures” of William Shakespeare, and as there is not in existence any other writing which can be supposed to be from his pen, it seems an indisputable fact that he was totally unable to write. There is also very strong evidence that he was likewise unable to read. Bacon signed the Shakespeare Plays. A CAREFUL examination of the First Folio of “Mr. William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies,” 1623, which are generally known as “The Plays of Shakespeare,” will provide that Bacon signed the plays in very many ways. I will place a few examples before my readers, and when they have carefully studied these they may perhaps (if they can get access to a photographic facsimile copy the First Folio of Shakespeare’s Plays, 1623), be able to discover additional traces of the great author’s hand. For reasons which it is not now necessary to discuss, Bacon selected as one of the keys to the mystery of his authorship of various works the number 53. The Great Folio of the Plays of 1623 is divided into Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies. Each of these, although they are all bound in one volume, is separately paged. It follows therefore, that there must be three pages numbered 53 in the Folio Volume of Shakespeare's Plays. I must also inform my readers that every page is divided into two columns, and it is absolutely certain that the author himself so arranged these that he knew in what column and in what line in such a column every word would appear in the printed page. 19 Let us examine, in the first instance, THE FIRST PAGE 53 in the plays. The second column of this page 53 commences with the first scene of the fourth act of the “Merry Wives of Windsor.” In this act a Welsh schoolmaster, “Evans,” “Dame Quickly,” and a boy named “William” appear. The object of the introduction of the Welshman seems to have been that he might mispronounce “c” as “g,” and so call “hic” “hig,” and “hoc” “hog.” William also is made wrongly to say that the accusative case is “hinc” instead of “hunc,” and Evans, the Welsh schoolmaster, who should have corrected this error made by the boy, repeats the blunder with the change of “c” into “g,” so as to give without confusion the right signature key-words which appear in the second column of the first page 53, as follow:- Eva. I pray you have your remembrance (childe) Accusativo, hing, hang, hog.* Qu. Hang-hog, is latten for Bacon, I warrant you Observe that “Bacon” is spelled with a capital “B,” and also note that in this way we are told quite clearly that Hang- hog means Bacon. In very numerous instances a hog with a halter (a rope with a slip-knot) round its neck appears as part of some engraving in some book to which Bacon’s name has not yet been publicly attached. I shall again refer to “Hang-hog” as we proceed. Next, let us carefully examine THE SECOND PAGE 53 in the Folio of the Plays, which in the first column contains the commencement of the first scene of the second act of the first part of “King Henry the Fourth.” Two carriers are conversing, and we read:- 1 Car. What Ostler, come away, and be hanged; come away. 2 Car. I have a Gammon of Bacon, and two razes of Ginger, to be delivered as farre as Charing-crosse. Observe that gammon is spelled with a capital “G,” and Bacon also is spelled with a capital “B.” Thus we have found Bacon in the second page 53. But I must not forget to inform my readers that this second page 53 is really and evidently of set purpose falsely numbered 53, because page 46 *Note.- In the folio Ac-cusativo hing, hang, hog are in italics as here printed. 20 is immediately followed by 49, there being no page numbered 47 or 48 in the Histories, the second part of the Plays. Having found what appears to be a revelation in each of the first two pages numbered 53 in the First Folio, we must remember that a Baconian revelation, in order to be complete, satisfactory, and certain, requires to be repeated "three" times. The initiated will know that the Great "Master-Mason" will supply two visible pillars, but that the third pillar will be the invisible pillar, the Shibboleth; therefore, the informed will not expect to find the third key upon the visible page 53, but upon THE INVISIBLE PAGE 53. Most of my readers will not fail to perceive that the invisible page 53 must be the page that is 53, when we count not from the beginning, but from the end of the book of Tragedies, that is, from the end of the volume.* [* *Note.— The real page 53 counting from the end is p. 347. The Great Author here twice uses the number 53 in order to give a revelation of himself. On that page 53 from the end, we find "Wilde-Boares" as the 53rd word from the commencement of the Scene. Bacon's crest is a Wild Boar.*] The last page in the Folio is 399. This is falsely numbered 993, not by accident or by a misprint, but (as the great cryptographic book, by Gustavus Selenus [The man in the Moon], published in 1624, will tell those who are able to read it) because 993 forms the word "Baconus," a signature of Bacon. Let me repeat that the last page of the Great Folio of the plays is page 399, and deducting 53 from 399 we obtain the number 346, which appears to be THE PAGE 53 FROM THE END. On this page, 346, in the first column, we find part of "The Tragedie of Anthony and Cleopatra," and there we read, Enobar. . . . . when you heare no more words of Pompey returne it againe: you shall have no time to wrangle in, when you have nothing left to do. Anth. Thou art a Souldier, onely speake no more. Enob. That trueth should be silent, I had almost forgot. Now here we perceive that "Pompey," "in," and "got," by the manner in which the type is arranged in the column, come directly under each other, and their initial letters being P. I. G., we quite easily read "pig," which is what we were looking for. But on this "invisible" page 53, in which the key-word is found, other very important revelations may also be discovered, 21 because it is the "Shibboleth" page. If we count the headline title and all the lines that come to the left-hand edge of the column of this page 346, we find "Pompey," which begins the word, "pig," is upon THE 43RD LINE. (Example 1.) Bacon very frequently signed with some form of cypher the first page of his secret books. Let us, then, look at the first page of the Great Folio of 1623, on which is the commencement of the play of "The Tempest." In the first column of that first page we shall read is perfect Gallowes: stand fast good Fate to his hanging, make the rope of destiny our cable, for our owne doth little advantage: If he be not borne to bee hang'd, our case is miserable. Here, reading upwards from hang'd, we read hang'd, H. O. G., the "h" of hang'd being twice used. And just as "Pompey," the commencement of Pig, is upon the 43rd line of page 346 (the invisible page 53), so here on page 1 the commencing word "hang'd" is also upon THE 43RD LINE (Example 2.) counting all the lines without exception, including as before the head-line titles. Observe, that it is only made possible for us to read "hang'd hog," because by the printer's "error" hanging is divided improperly as han-ging instead of hang-ing. This apparent misprint is a most careful arrangement made by the great author himself. I must again repeat that there are no misprints or errors in the First Folio, 1623, because the great author was alive, and most carefully arranged every column in every page, and every word in every column, so that we should find every word exactly where we do find such particular word. Hang'd hog is, therefore, clearly the signature of the great author upon the first page of the Folio, just as 993 is his signature upon the last page of the Folio. But, as I have already said, in order to obtain a full, certain, and complete revelation we must discover a third example. This we shall find in the second column of THE FIRST PAGE 43. (Example 3.) wherein is the first scene of the second act of "The Merry Wives of Windsor," where we read as follows : — Mis. Page. What's the matter, woman ? Mi. Ford. O woman : if it were not for one trifling respect, I could come to such honour. Mi Page. Hang the trifle (woman) take the honour. [Left Page] 22 Here, reading the initial letters of each line upwards from “Hang,” we get quite clearly S. O. W., and we perceive that “Hang sow” is just as much Bacon as is Hang hog. Thus, we get a triplet of No. 43, as we had a triplet of page 53, but we should also realize that we get a third triplet, because we find HANG HOG (Example 1.) on page one in the Comedies, the first portion of the plays, and we find HANG SOW. (Example 2.) which is practically the same thing as Hang hog, upon age 43 in the Comedies, the first portion of the plays, and we find that HANG-HOG IS LATTEN FOR BACON ( Example 3.) is on page 53 in the Comedies, the first portion of the plays, and “Hang-hog is Bacon,” gives the Shibboleth, and affords the explanation of the two previous examples. Thus we have a revelation of Bacon’s authorship in “three times three” forms, and the revelation is, therefore, “absolutely perfect .” THE NUMBER 36. There are thirty-six plays in the First Folio. This is not accidental. Thirty-six is a cabalistic number, and is used in several of Bacon’s works when he refers to the Stage or to Plays. THE 36TH ESSAY, in the Italian edition of Bacon’s “Essays,” published in London, in 1618, is entitled “Fattioni” (Stage Plays). THE 36TH ANTITHETA In the Latin edition of Bacon’s “Advancement of Learning,” published in 1623, the same year in which the Folio of the Plays appeared, the XXXVI. Antitheta commences “Amorim multa debet scena (stage plays),” and when the English edition was brought out in 1640, the XXXVI. Antitheta commences with the word “The Stage.” THE 36TH APOPHTHEGM In the collection of Bacon’s “Apopthegms,” printed in 1671, Apophthegm 36 reads as follows, and fully explains the meaning of “Hang-hog is latten for Bacon, I warrant you.” “Sir Nicholas Bacon, being appointed as Judge for the Northern Circuit, and having brought his Trials that came before him to such a pass, as the passing of Sentence on Malefactors, he was by one of the Malefactors mightily [Right Page] 23 importuned for to save his life, which when nothing that he had said did avail, he at length desired his mercy on the account of kindred: Prethee said my Lord Judge, how came that in? Why, if it please you my Lord, your name is Bacon, and mine is Hog, and in all Ages Hog and Bacon have been so near kindred, that they are not to be separated. I,[Aye], but, replyed Judge Bacon until it be well hanged.” PAGE 53. At an early date Bacon selected the number “53” to give in numerous books revelations concerning his authorship. In Florio’s “Second Frutes,” published in 1591, on page 53 we read:- H. A slice of bacon, would make us taste this wine well. S. What ho, set that gammon of bakon upon the board. Florio was always a servant of Bacon’s, and received a pension for “making my lord’s works known abroad.” The above is inserted on page 53 to inform us that Bacon’s name may be spelled in many different ways, as students of various books will find to be the fact. In the “Mikrokosmos,”* of which editions both in Latin and French were published at Antwerp in 1592, we find on page t3 a picture of Circe’s Island, which the intelligent reader will perceive represents “the Stage.” Beneath it are the words from Proverbs is. 17, which in our English authorized version read, “Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.” Examining this engraving, we perceive in the forefront Bacon’s boar, drawn exactly as it is heraldically portrayed in Bacon’s crest, but with a man’s head surmounted by a “Cap of Liberty,” and we should remember the words in Shakespeare’s play, “As You Like It” ( which means”Wisdom from the mouth of a clown”): “I must have liberty:. . . . to blow on whom I please, for so fools have . . .Invest me in my motely: Give me leave to speak my mind, and I will through and through cleanse the foule bodie of th’ infected world, if they will patiently receive my medicine.” In Bacon’s “Advancement of Learning,” 1640, first edition in English, we find a first page “53.” In the margin of this page we find “Alexand”: (Bacon sometimes alluded to himself as Alexander). But the page 55 is misnumbered “53,” and _____________________________________________________________________________________ *Note.- The title page is headed with the figure of a Chameleon, which forms the “53rd” of “Alciati’s Emblems.” The Chameleon was supposed to assume various à appearances, and is therefore used as an emblem for Bacon, who assumed numerous masks in order to do good to all mankind, though in a “despised weed.” 24 on this second and false page " 53" we read in the margin S. FRAN. BACON, all in capital letters, almost the only marginal capital letters in the whole of the book, which is Bacon's own book, and yet has this striking reference to himself on the false page " 53." The number of pages " 53" (very frequently falsely paged " 53"), in which some reference to Bacon or to the Plays may be discovered, is very large. I will, however, now quote only two other instances. In 1664, the third edition of Shakespeare's plays, containing seven extra plays, was issued, and the editors, in order to mislead the initiated and pretend that they had Bacon's authority for so adding some of his inferior plays to his revised selection of the thirty-six plays which formed the great Folio of 1623, numbered two pages 53, which they placed opposite to each other, and on each of these we find " S. Albans" (Bacon was Viscount S. Albans). In 1709, the fifth edition was published by Nicholas Rowe, and in that edition there is a proper page 53, and also 55 is misprinted 53 (the only mispagination in the whole book of 3,324 pages), and this is made in the false page 53 in order to afford a revelation if we carefully read both pages " 53" together. The Northumberland Manuscripts. On page 25 is shewn a type transcript of the cover or outside page of a collection of manuscripts in the possession of the Duke of Northumberland, which were discovered at Northumberland House in London in 1867. Three years later, viz., in 1870, James Spedding published a thin little volume entituled "A Conference of Pleasure," in which he printed a full size facsimile of the original of the outside page, which is here reproduced in modern script on page 25. He also gave a few particulars of the MSS. themselves. In 1904, Mr. Frank J. Burgoyne brought out a Collotype Facsimile of every page that now remains of the collection of MSS. in an edition limited to 250 copies, in a fine Royal Quarto at the price of £4 4s. each. Of the MSS. mentioned on the cover, nine only now remain, and of these, six are certainly by Francis Bacon; the first being written by him for a Masque or "Fanciful devise," which Mr. Spedding thinks was presented at the Court of Elizabeth in 1592. The reader's attention is directed to this Masque, which consists of " The praise of the Worthiest Vertue, &c." Lower. 25 Nevill Mr. FFrauncis Bacon of Tribute or giving what is dew — — Nevill By Christ religio fons refusing of them your religion refreshing yourselves as in Christ most favour most refusing of any & ne vile velis all Anthony Comfort and consorte Comft ne vile velis refreshing ye hart laden with grief and oppression of heart Philipp Edmund your your defence Earle Earle Earle diverse places indirectly for profit Multis annis iam transactio Nulla fules est in, pactis Mell in arc Verba lactis SSell in Corde ffraus, in factis your lovinge ffriend your. your self honorificabilit[??]dine speach your selfe among others Earle of Arundles letter to the Queens By Mr. ffrancis Baco your soverign your from your your.selfe refusing Bacon end of the hall Asmund and Cornelia revealing day through every crany peepes and see your Shale Sh simple revert Esquier agt The praise of the worthiest vertue The praise of the worthiest affection The praise of the worthiest power The praise of the worthiest person Thomas By Mr. Francis Thomas By Mr. FFrancis Bacon of Gr Francis tierner Greis Inn in the Philipp against monsieur revealed Earle of Arundells letter to the Queen from your service Speaches for my Lord of Essex at the tylt Speach for my Lord of Sussex tilt more than externally Leycesters Common Wealth Incortoautore Ley Dyrmonth Adam Orations at Graus Inne revells Dyr Queenes Mate many By Mr. FFrauncis Bacon Bacon Earle of A By Mr former By Mr Essaies by the same author. printed FFrauncis William Shakespeare Shakespeare Rychard the second FFrauncis Rychard the third Asmund and Cornelia Ile of Dogs frmnt by Thomas Nashe Thomas Thom Thom as your inferior plaiers Thomas William Shakespeare yours Sh Sh Sh Shak Shakespeare Shak your William Shakespeare Will William Shakespe Shakspe Shakespear Reproduction in Modern Script of Folio 1 of the Northumberland MSS. 26 down we read: "Speaches for my Lord of Essex at the tylt," "Speach for my Lord of Sussex tilt," "Orations at Graies Inne revells." We must remember that in numerous instances when masques were presented, reference is made to Bacon having in some way countenanced them or assisted them by taking part in the arrangement of the "dumb shew." This teaches us how familiar Bacon was with stage presentations. Further down on the page we find "Rychard the second" and " Rychard the third." Mr. Spedding declared himself satisfied that these were the (so-called) Shakespeare plays. Immediately above, we read "William Shakespeare," which appears to be part of the original writing upon the page. It is not necessary here to refer to the remainder of these original writings, but there is a mass of curious scribblings all over the page. Concerning these, Mr. Spedding says: "I find nothing in these later scribblings or in what remains of the book itself to indicate a date later than the reign of Elizabeth." They are therefore written by a contemporary hand. For the purpose of reference I have placed the letters a b c d e outside of the facsimile. (a) "Honorificabilitudine." This curious long word, when taken in conjunction with the words "Your William Shakespeare," which are found more than once upon the page, appears to have some reference to the longer word "Honorificabilitudinitatibus," which is found in "Loves Labors Lost," printed in 1598, the first play to which the name of Shakespeare (spelled Shakespere) was attached. I must repeat that upon no play appeared the name William Shakespeare until that man had been sent permanently away to Stratford in 1597. The long word, as I shew in my book,"Bacon is Shakespeare," Chapter X., page 84, gives us the Masonic number 287, and really tell us with the most absolute mechanical certainty that plays were Francis Bacon's "orphan" children. (b) "By Mr. ffrauncis William Shakespeare Baco" -- observe that ffrauncis is repeated "upside down," over these lines, that " your yourself" also printed upside down, appears at the commencement of the lines. The reader will therefore not be surprised to read at (c) "revealing day through every crany peepes"; which seems to be a particularly accurate account of the object of the revelations afforded by the "Scribblings" so called, viz., to inform us that "Bacon was Shakespeare." The same kind of revelation is again repeated at (d), when we find "your William Shakespeare" and then above it 27 "Shak Shakespeare" and "your William Shakespeare." And the reader should remember that, as Mr. Spedding admits, all these so-called "scribblings" were contemporary and written before 1603, the date of the death of Queen Elizabeth. I also call attention at (e) to the three curious scrolls, each written with one continuous sweep of the pen, which it would take a great deal of practice to succeed in successfully and easily writing. I myself am in a particularly fortunate position with regard to these scrolls, because I possess a very fine large-copy of " Les Tenures de Monsieur Littleton," 1591. This work is annotated throughout in what the British Museum authorities admit to be the handwriting of Francis Bacon, and, upon the wide large paper margin of the title page, eight similar scrolls appear, which have evidently some (shall we say Rosicrucian) significance. * Perhaps I should add that here, in this little book, before the reader's eyes, is the knowledge of the revealing page of the Northumberland MSS. given for the first time wide publicity. Spedding's little book, which has been long out of print, was too insignificant to attract much notice, and Mr. Burgoyne's splendid work was too expensive for ordinary purchasers. Bacon and the English Language. We owe our mighty English tongue of to-day to Francis Bacon and to Francis Bacon alone. The time has now come when this stupendous fact should be taught in every school, and that the whole of the Anglo-Saxon speaking peoples should know that the most glorious birthright which they possess, their matchless language, was the result of the life and labour of one man, viz.- Francis Bacon, who, when as little more than a boy, he was sent with our ambassador, Sir Amyas Paulett, to Paris, found there that "La Pleiade" (the Seven) had just succeeded in creating the French language from what had before been as they declared "merely a barbarous jargon." Young Bacon at once seized the idea and resolved to create an English language capable of expressing the highest thoughts. All writers are agreed that at the commencement of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, English as a "literary" language did not exist. All writer are agreed *Note.- A few copies of my book,"Bacon is Shakespeare," published by Gay & Hancock, are still on sale at the price of 2s. 6d. No important statement contained therein has been or ever will be successfully controverted because the facts stated are derived from books contained in my unique library, which includes works that must have belonged to a distinguished Rosicrucian who was well acquainted with the secrets of Bacon's authorship. 28 that what is known as the Elizabethan Age was the most glorious period of English literature. All writers are agreed that our glorious language of to-day is founded upon the English translation of the Bible and upon the Plays of Shakespeare. Every word of each of these was undoubtedly written by, or under the direction of, Francis Bacon. Max Müller, in his “Science of Language,” Vol. I., 1899, page 378, says: “A well educated person in England who has been at a public school and at university . . . seldom uses more than about 3,000 or 4,000 words. . . . The Hebrew Testament says all that it has to say with 5,642 words, Milton’s poetry is build up with 8,000, and Shakespeare, who probably displayed a greater variety of expression than any writer in any language produced all his plays with about 15,000 words.” Does anyone suppose that any master of the Stratford Grammar School, where Latin was the only language used, knew so many as 2,000 English words, or that the illiterate householder of Stratford, known as William Shakespeare, knew half or a quarter so many? But to return to the Bible- we mean the Bible of 1611, known as the Authorised Version, which J. A. Weisse tells us contains about 15,000 different words (i.e., the same number as used in the Shakespeare plays). It was translated by 48 men, whose names are known, and then handed to King James I.* It was printed about one and a half years later. In the Preface, which is evidently written by Bacon, we are told “we have not tyed ourselves to an uniformitie of phrasing, or to an identitie of words.” This question of variety of expression is discussed in the Preface at considerable length (compare with Max Müller’s references to Shakespeare’s extraordinary variety of expression) and then we read: “Wee might also be charged . . . with some unequall dealing towards a great number of good English words . . . if we should say, as it were, unto certaine words, Stand up higher, have a place in the Bible alwaies, and to other of like qualitie, Get ye hence, be banished for ever.” This means that an endeavour was made to insert all good English words into this new translation of the Bible, so that none might be deemed to be merely “secular.” Is is possible that any intelligent person can really read the Bible as a whole, not now a bit and now a scrap, but read it straight through like an ordinary book and fail to perceive that the majestic *Note.- The fourty-eight translators made use of “The Bishops’ Bible,” but no copy of this work, on which appear any annotations by the translators, can be discovered. See Bishop Westcott’s “History of the English Bible,” 1905, p. 118. 29 rhythm that runs through the whole cannot be the language of many writers, but must flow from the pen, or at least from the editorship, of one great master mind? A confirmation of this statement that the Authorised Version of King James I. was edited by one masterhand is contained in the " Times" newspaper of March 22nd, 1912, where Archdeacon Westcott, writing about the Revised Version of 1881, says, the revisers " were men of notable learning and singular industry. . . . There were far too many of them ; and successful literary results cannot be achieved by syndicates." Yes, the Bible and Shakespeare embody the language of the great master, but before it could be so embodied, the English tongue had to be created, and it was for this great purpose that Bacon made his piteous appeals for funds to Bodley, to Burleigh, and to Queen Elizabeth. Observe the great mass of splendid translations of the Classics (often second-hand from the French, as Plutarch's "Lives" by North) with which England was positively flooded at that period. Hitherto no writer seems to have called attention to the fact that certain of these translations were made from the French instead of from the original Greek or Latin, not because it was easier to take them from the French, but because in that way the new French words and phrases were enabled to be introduced to enrich the English tongue. The sale of these translations could not possibly have paid any considerable portion of their cost. Thus Bacon worked. Thus his books under all sorts of pseudonyms appeared. No book of the Elizabethan Age of any value proceeded from any source except from his workshop of those "good pens," over whom Ben Jonson was foreman. In a very rare and curious little volume, published anonymously in 1645, under the title of " The Great Assises holden in Parnassus by Apollo and his Assessours," Ben Jonson is described as the " Keeper of the Trophonian Denne," and in Westminster Abbey his medallion bust appears clothed in a left-handed coat to show us that he was a servant of Bacon. O, rare Ben Jonson-what a turncoat grown ! Thou ne'er wast such, till clad in stone ; Then let not this disturb thy sprite, Another age shall set thy buttons right. Stowe ii., p. 512-13. In this same book, we see on the leaf following the title page the name of Apollo in large letters in an ornamental frame, and below it in the place of honour we find Francis Bacon placed as " Lord VERULAN Chancellor of Parnassus." 30 This means that Bacon was the greatest of poets since the world began. This proud position is also claimed for him by Thomas Randolf in a Latin poem published in 1640, but believed to have been written immediately after Bacon's death in 1626. Thomas Randolf declares that Phoebus (i.e., Apollo) was accessory to Bacon's death because he was afraid that Bacon would some day come to be crowned king of poetry or the Muses. George Herbert, Bacon's friend, who had overlooked many of his works, repeats the same story, calling Bacon the colleague of Sol, i.e., Phoebus Apollo. Instances might be multiplied, but I will only quote the words of John Davies, of Hereford, another friend of Bacon's, who addresses him in his "Scourge of Folly," published about 1610, as follows: - As to her Bellamour the Muse is wont; For, thou dost her embozom; and dost use, Her company for sport twixt grave affaires. Bacon was always recognised by his contemporaries as among the greatest of poets. Although nothing of any poetical importance bearing Bacon's name had been up to that time published, Stowe (in his Annales, printed in 1615) places Bacon seventh in his list of Elizabethan poets. The Shakespeare Myth is dead. IN 1898 the Shakespeare myth was mortally wounded by the curious collection of "may have beens," "might have beens," "could have beens," "should have beens," " must have beens," etc., collected in Sir Sidney Lee's supposititious life of William Shakespeare. In 1910 it was killed by the Cambridge History of English Literature, edited by Dr. Ward, Master of Peterhouse, and Mr. Waller, also of Peterhouse, for in Volume V., pages 165-6-7, we read : " We are not quite sure of the identity of Shakespeare's father; we are by no means certain of the identity of his wife. . . . We do not know whether he ever went to school. No biography of Shakespeare, therefore, which deserves any confidence has ever been constructed without a large infusion of the tell-tale words 'apparently,' 'probably,' 'there can be little doubt,' and no small infusion of the still more tell-tale ' perhaps,' 'it would be natural,' 'according to what was usual at the time,' and so forth. . . John Shakespeare married Mary Arden, an heiress of a good yeomanry family, but as to whose connection with a more distinguished one of the same name there remains much room for doubt." 31 I should add that no letter addressed to Shakespeare exists excepting one asking for a loan of £30; and that no contemporary letter referring to him has been discovered excepting three which are about money. In 1910 appeared my own book, " Bacon is Shakespeare," which, placed in every library in the world, has carried everywhere the news of the decease of the myth. In 1911 Mark Twain's book, "Is Shakespeare dead ? " which had been published in 1909 in England, was included in the Tauchnitz collection, and therefore likewise carries the news of the decease of the myth all over the earth. Mark Twain describes Shakespeare as just a " Tar Baby," and says : " About him you can find out nothing. Nothing of any importance. Nothing worth the trouble of stowing away in your memory. Nothing that even remotely indicates that he was ever . anything more than a distinctly commonplace person . . . a small trader in a small village that did not regard him as a person of any consequence, and had forgotten all about him before he was cold in his grave.* . . . We can go to the records and find out the life-history of every renowned racehorse of modern times-but not Shakespeare's ! There are many reasons why, and they have been furnished in cartloads (of guess and conjecture) . . . . but there is one that is worth all the rest of the reasons put together, and is abundantly sufficient all by itself-he hadn't any history to tell. There is no way of getting round that deadly fact. And no sane way has yet been discovered of getting round its formidable significance." The Shakespeare myth is now destroyed. Does any educated person of intelligence still believe in the " Tar Baby," the illiterate clown of Stratford, who was totally unable to write a single letter of his own name, and of whom we are told, if we understand what we are told, that he could not read a line of print. No book was found in his house, and neither of his daughters could either read or write. There exists no " portrait " of Shakespeare. The significant fact that the Figure put for Shakespeare in the 1623 Folio of the plays consists of a doubly left-handed dummy is alone sufficient to dispose of the Shakespeare myth. I have printed in various newspapers all over the world about a million copies of articles demonstrating this fact, which none can successfully dispute. * Note.-Stratford owes all its glory to two of its sons, John, Archbishop of Canterbury, who built a church there; and Hugh Clopton, who built, at his own cost, a bridge of fourteen arches across the Avon. Translated from Jean Blaeu, 1645. 32 In modern times Percy Bysshe Shelley-- one of England's greatest poets (who knew nothing about the Shakespeare controversy)-- wrote as follows: "Bacon was a poet. His language has a sweet and majestic rhythm, which satisfies the sense, no less than the almost superhuman wisdom of his philosophy satisfies the intellect. It is a strain, which distends and then bursts the circumference of the reader's mind, and pours itself forth together with it into the universal element with which it has perpetual sympathy." This statement by Shelley, taken in conjunction with the testimony of "The Great Assises holden in Parnassus," 1645, and the words of Thomas Randolf, 1640, and of Bacon's friends George Herbert and John Davies, together with the contemporary evidence of Stowe in 1615, are sufficient to dispose, once and for all, of the absurd contention that is sometimes put forth that Bacon did not possess sufficient poetical ability to have written his own greatest work, the Immortal Plays. Lord Palmerston said that he rejoiced to see the reintegration of Italy, the unveiling of the mystery of China, and the explosion of the Shakespeare illusions. Lord Houghton, the father of the present Marquis of Crewe, said that he agreed with Lord Palmerston. John Bright said any man that believed that William Shakespeare wrote "Hamlet," or "Lear," was a fool. Prince Bismarck said in 1892: "He could not understand how it were possible that a man, however gifted with the intuitions of genius, could have written what was attributed to Shakespeare unless he had been in touch with the great affairs of State, behind the scenes of political life, and also intimate with all the social courtesies and refinements of thought which in Shakespeare's time were only to be met with the highest circles" The "Tempest" is over, the false crown of the Island (the Stage) has been torn from the head of the dummy that appeared to wear it. It seems difficult to imagine that people possessed of ordinary intelligence can any longer continue to believe that the most learned of all the literary works in the world was written by the most unlearned of men, William Shakespeare of Stratford, who never seems even to have attempted to write a single letter of his own name. It has been proved that the six so-called signatures of Shakespeare were written by various law clerks, and it is now admitted that there exist no other writings which can even be supposed to be from his pen. E. D-L. Printed by Truslove & Bray, Ltd., West Norwood, S.E. THE TESTIMONY OF FLORIO. WE are told quite distinctly-if we are able to understand what we are told- that the plays known as Shakespeare's were, in fact, written by "a gentleman"-a man of distinction-"who loved better to be a poet than to be counted so." In Florio's "Second Frutes," 1591, immediately after the address to the reader, there is a sonnet, "Phaeton to his friend Florio," which, it is admitted by Sir Sidney Lee, must have been written by " Shakespeare." Professor Minto was the first to discover that this was a "Shakespeare" sonnet (See the article "Shakespeare," in the 9th Edition of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," 1886, Vol. 21, p. 756.) Well, what does Florio himself say about it? The sonnet appeared in his "Second Frutes," 1591, and he thus refers to it in "A Worlde of Wordes," which is dated 1598:-"There is another sort of leering curs, that rather snarle than bite, whereof I coulde instance in one, who, lighting upon a good sonnet of a gentleman, a friend of mine, that loved better to be a poet, than to be counted so, called the auctor a rymer. "Here we see that Florio says most distinctly that the author of the sonnet which is addressed to himself "loved better to be a poet than to be counted so." But the author of that sonnet is admittedly the author of all the "Shakespeare " sonnets, and also admittedly the author of the "Shakespeare" plays. Florio there- fore tells us in words the meaning of which it is not possible to mistake that the mighty author of the plays was "a gentleman"-a man of position-"who loved better to be a poet than to be counted so." Florio was always a servant of Bacon's, and eventually received a pension of £50 per annum for making my lord's works known abroad. It is absolutely impossible that Florio could have been alluding to the "Householder of Stratford" when he said that the sonnet was written by "a gentleman, who loved better to be a poet than to be counted so." The man of Stratford could have had no possible reason for desiring concealment, if, indeed, he who could neither read nor write had been a poet. . Furthermore, William Shakespeare, of Stratford-upon-Avon, did not become entitled to be styled "a gentleman" until he had obtained a coat of arms in 1599. In Ben Jonson's "Every man out of his humour," the clown who has bought a coat of arms appears upon the stage in Act iii., and says, "I can write myself gentleman now, here's my pattent." Writing in 1598 about what had been printed in 1591, Florio could not have described the "essential clown," William Shakespeare, of Stratford-upon-Avon, as "a gentleman, a friend of mine." If it were possible to imagine that Florio might have been friendly with the "essential clown" he would have written merely "a friend of mine," and would not have gone out of his way to say "a gentleman, a friend of mine." Bacon himself tells us that he loved better to be a poet than to be counted so in his "A Declaration of the Practices and Treasons Attempted and Committed by Robert, late Earl of Essex, and his Complices," which was published in 1601. In this work Bacon says, "About the middle of Michaelmas term, Her Majesty had a purpose to dine at my lodge at Twickenham Park, at which time I had-though I profess not to be a poet-prepared a sonnet, directly tending and alluding to draw on Her Majesty's reconcilement to my Lord Essex, which I remember I also showed to a great person." Here Bacon, writing in 1601, says, "I profess not to be a poet," which seems to fit in exactly with the testimony of Florio. Bacon, in 1603, repeats the same story of his being "a concealed poet" in his letter to John Davis, whom he asks to use his good offices on his behalf with King James I., for, he concludes, "So desiring you to be good to concealed poets." Similarly, in his last prayer, Bacon says, "I have, though in a despised weed, procured the good of all men." "Despised weed" signifies a mean disguise. What disguise could be meaner than the name of the drunken, illiterate clown of Stratford-upon-Avon ? Again, the "gentleman"-the man of position-"who loved better to be a poet than to be counted so," writes in the "Shakespeare" sonnet, number 76 :- " Why write I still all one, ever the same, And keepe invention in a noted weed, "That every word doth almost sel* my name, Showing their birth and where they did proceed ?" ( *Sel may mean sell, or spell, or tell.) Here we see that the writer of the sonnets, who is also the writer of the Shakespeare plays, tells us, in the actual words of Bacon in his last prayer, that he keeps his works of invention, that is, his poetical and dramatic works, concealed under a "noted weed," a pseudonym, a mean disguise. In Book vii. of his "De Augmentis," 1623, which was, however, not translated into English till 1640, Bacon again repeats the same story, for he says, "As for myself (excellent King) to speak the truth of myself, I have often wittingly and willingly neglected the glory of mine own name, and learning (if any such be) both in the works I now publish, and in those I contrive for hereafter; whilst. I study to advance the good and profit of Mankind." [TURN OVER.] Baredale Road, Berne Bill Road, London, S.E. March, 1913. SIR, - I am requested by Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence to enclose for your acceptance a copy of "THE SHAKESPEARE MYTH," as the time has now arrived when the English-speaking peoples should be freed from the degradation and disgrace of being supposed to believe that the "greatest birth of time"-the most learned and important of all the works of man-was produced by a drunken, illiterate clown, who could not write so much as one letter of his own name. Sir Sidney Lee admits that in the plays nothing of the life of Shakespeare of Stratford can be found. But the true artist in his noblest works always lays bare his own life, his own soul, his own sorrows. This has been done by Francis Bacon throughout the plays, which, therefore-when their real author is recognised-become almost infinitely more valuable and interesting. The "Merchant of Venice" was written when Bacon (who appears as Bassanio) was in great need of money, and his brother Anthony (who is Antonio) came to his assistance, while the cruel money-lender Spenser is held up to scorn as Shylock. When Bacon tells of Wolsey's fall, he is accurately describing his own dismissal from office. Writing in the "Revue des Deux Mondes," in 1865, Emile Montegut pointed out that "The Tempest" is the author's literary testament. In this play we read, "My brother.... call'd Antonio," and "Graves at my command Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let them forth By my so potent art," while the author tells us he is breaking his staff and dismissing his messenger Ariel (the spirit of poesy)--which signifies that he will write no more plays. He also adds, "Deeper than did ever plummet sound, I'll drown my book." It remained drowned as "His" for 287 years, till the hour arrived, when, as he says, "My dukedom,... which perforce, I know thou must restore." Then comes the close of the play and the false crown of the Island (i.e. the stage) is torn from the head of the dummy and cast to the ground, and we hear the terrible confession which has now to be repeated by every supporter of the "Essential clown of Stratford," "What a thrice-double ass Was I, to take this drunkard for a God." "THE SHAKESPEARE MYTH" is published by The Sturgis & Walton Co., of 31-33 East 27th Street, New York, and can be purchased everywhere at 10 cents. Sir Edwin's larger book, "BACON IS SHAKESPEARE," can also be purchased from them, or through any bookstore, at $1. Yours faithfully, F. J. BURGOYNE. (TURN OVER.) SPECIMEN COPY: Important literary news within. When you have read, hand to a friend. PRICE THREE CENTS. THE IRVING LIBRARY. [Entered at the Post-office, New York, as second-class matter.] Vol. I. WEEKLY. No. 29. JANUARY 2, 1884. $25 A YEAR CONVERSATION By Thomas DeQuincey. PUBLISHER'S NOTICE. Particular attention is requested to the announcement elsewhere of Alden's Manifold Cyclopedia, which is to be under the editorial supervision of the former editor-in-chief of The Library of Universal Knowledge, and of the principal editor and compiler of the great "Imperial Dictionary," the publication of which was recently completed in England. 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SESAME AND LILIES, CROWN OF WILD OLIVE, and Ethics of the Dust, as above, bound in one volume, half Russia, red edges, price 50 cts. CONVERSATION. AMONGST the arts connected with the elegances of social life, in a degree which nobody denies, is the art of Conversation; but in a degree which almost everybody denies, if one may judge by their neglect of its simplest rules, this same art is not less connected with the uses of social life. Neither the luxury of conversation, nor the possible benefit of conversation, is to be under that rude administration of it which generally prevails. Without an art, without some simple system of rules, gathered from experience of such contingencies as are most likely to mislead the practice, when left to its own guidance, no act of man nor effort accomplishes its purposes in perfection. The sagacious Greek would not so much as drink a glass of wine amongst a few friends without a systematic art to guide him, and a regular from of polity to control him, which art and which polity (begging Plato's pardon) were better than any of more ambitious aim in his Republic. Every symposium had its set of rules, and vigorous they were; had its own symposiarch to govern it, and a tyrant he was. Elected democratically, he became, when once installed, an autocrat not less despotic than the King of Persia. Purposes still more slight and fugitive have been organized into arts. Taking soup gracefully, under the difficulties opposed to it by a dinner dress at that time fashionable, was reared into an art about forty-five years ago by a Frenchman, who lectured upon it to ladies in London; and the most brilliant duchess of that day was amongst his best pupils. Spitting-- if the reader will pardon the mention of so gross a fact- was shown to be a very difficult art, and publicly prelected upon about the same time, in the same great capital. The professors in this faculty were the hackney-coachmen; the pupils were gentlemen who paid a guinea each for three lessons; the chief problem in this system of hydraulics being to throw the salivating column in a parabolic curve from the center of Parliament Street, when 2 CONVERSATION. driving four-in-hand, to the foot pavements, right and left, so as to alarm the consciences of guilty peripatetics on either side. The ultimate problem, which closed the curriculum of study, was held to lie in spitting round a corner; when that was mastered, the pupil was entitled to his doctor's degree. Endless are the purposes of man, merely festal or merely comic, and aiming but at the momentary life of a cloud, which have earned for themselves the distinction and apparatus of a separate art. Yet for conversation, the greatest paramount purpose of social meetings, no art exists or has been attempted. That seems strange, but is not really so. A limited process submits readily to the limits of a technical system; but a process so unlimited as the interchange of thought, seems to reject them. And even, if an art of conversation were less unlimited, the means of carrying such an art into practical effect, amongst so vast a variety of minds, seem wanting. Yet again, perhaps, after all, this may rest on a mistake. What we begin by misjudging is the particular phasis of conversation which brings it under the control of art and discipline. It is not in its relation to the intellect that conversation ever has been improved or will improved primarily, but in its relation to manners. Has a man ever mixed with what in technical phrase is called "good company," meaning company in the highest degree polished, company which (being or not being aristocratic as respects its composition) is aristocratic as respects the standard of its manners and usages? If he really has, and does not deceive himself from vanity or from pure inacquaintance with the world, in that case he must have remarked the large effect impressed upon the grace and upon the freedom of conversation by a few simple instincts of real good breeding. Good breeding--what is it? There is no need in this place to answer that question comprehensively; it is sufficient to say, that it is made up chiefly of negative elements; that it shows itself far less in what it prescribes, than in what it forbids. Now, even under this limitation of the idea, the truth is, that more will be done for the benefit of conversation by the simple magic of good manners (that is, chiefly by a system of forbearances), applied to the besetting vices of social intercourse, than ever was or can be done by all varieties of intellectual power assembled upon the same arena. Intellectual graces of the highest order may perish and confound each other when exercised in a spirit of ill temper, or under the license of bad manners; whereas, very humble CONVERSATION 3 powers, when allowed to expand themselves colloquially in that genial freedom which is possible only under the most absolute confidence in the self-restraint of your collocutors, accomplish their purpose to a certainty, if it be the ordinary purpose of liberal amusement, and have a chance of accomplishing it even when this purpose is the more ambitious one of communicating knowledge or exchanging new views upon truth. In my own early years, having been formed by nature too exclusively and morbidly for solitary thinking, I observed nothing. Seeming to have eyes, in reality I saw nothing. But it is a matter of no very uncommon experience, that, whilst the mere observers never become mediators, the mere mediators, on the other hand, may finally ripen into close observers. Strength of thinking, through long years, upon innumerable themes, will have the effect of disclosing a vast variety of questions, to which it soon becomes apparent that answers are lurking up and down the whole field of daily experience; and thus an external experience which is slighted in youth, because it was a dark cipher that could be read into no meaning, a key that answered to no lock, gradually becomes interesting as it is found to yield one solution after another to problems that have independently matured in the mind. Thus, for instance, upon the special functions of conversation upon its powers, its laws, its ordinary diseases, and their appropriate remedies, in youth I never bestowed a thought or a care. I viewed it, not as one amongst the gay ornamental arts of the intellect, but as one amongst the dull necessities of business. Loving solitude too much I understood too little the capacities of colloquial intercourse. And thus it is, though not for my reason, that most people estimate the intellectual relations of conversation. Let these, however, be what they may, one thing seemed undeniable--that this world talked a great deal too much. It would be better for all parties, if nine is every ten of the winged words flying about in this world (Homer's epea pteroenta) had their feathers clipped amongst men, or even amongst women, who have a right to a larger allowance of words. Yet, as it was quite out of my power to persuade the world into any such self-denying reformation, it seemed equally out of the line of my duties to nourish any moral anxiety in that direction. To talk seemed then in the same category as to sleep; not an accomplishment, but a base physical infirmity. As a moralist, I really was culpably careless upon 4 CONVERSATION. the whole subject. I cared as little what absurdities men practiced in their vast tennis-courts of conversation, where the ball is flying backwards and forwards to no purpose forever, as what tricks Englishmen might play with their monstrous national debt. Yet at length what I disregarded on any principle of moral usefulness, I came to make an object of the profoundest interest on principles of art. Betting, in like manner, and wagering, which apparently had no moral value, and for that reason had been always slighted as inconsiderable arts (though, by the way, they always had one valuable use, namely, that of evading quarrels, since a bet summarily intercepts an altercation), rose suddenly into a philosophic rank, when successively Huyghens, the Bernoullis, and De Moivre, were led, by the suggestion of these trivial practices amongst men, to throw the light of a high mathematical analysis upon the whole doctrine of Chances. Lord Bacon had been led to remark the capacities of conversation as an organ for sharpening one particular mode of intellectual power. Circumstances, on the other hand, led me into remarking the special capacities of conversation, as an organ for absolutely creating another mode of power. Let a man have read, thought, studied, as much as he may, rarely will he reach his possible advantages as a ready man, unless he has exercised his powers much in conversation -- that was Lord Bacon's idea. Now, this wise and useful remark points in a direction not objective, but subjective -- that is, it does not promise any absolute extension to truth itself, but only some greater facilities to the man who expounds or diffuses the truth. Nothing will be done for truth objectively that would not at any rate be done, but subjectively it will be done with more fluency, and at less cost of exertion to the doer. On the contrary, my own growing reveries on the latent powers of conversation (which, though a thing that then I hated, yet challenged at times unavoidably my attention) pointed to an absolute birth of new insight into the truth itself, as inseparable from the finer and more scientific exercise of the talking art. It would not be the brilliancy, the ease, or the adroitness of the expounder, that would benefit, but the absolute interests of the thing expounded. A feeling dawned on me of a secret magic lurking in the peculiar life, velocities, and contagious ardor of conversation, quite separate from any which belonged to books; arming a man with new forces, and not merely with a new dexterity in CONVERSATION. 5 wielding the old ones. I felt, and in this I could not be mistaken, as too certainly it was a fact of my own experience, that in the electric kindling of life between two minds, and far less from the kindling natural to conflict (though that also is something) than from the kindling through sympathy with the object discussed, in its momentary coruscation of shifting phases, there sometimes arise glimpses and shy revelations of affinity, suggestion, relation, analogy, that could not have been approached through any avenues of methodical study. Great organists find the same effect of inspiration, the same result of power creative and revealing, in the mere movement and velocity of their own voluntaries, like the heavenly wheels of Milton, throwing off fiery flakes and bickering flames; these impromptu torrents of music create rapturous fioriture, beyond all capacity in the artist to register, or afterwards to imitate. The reader must be well aware that many philosophic instances exist where a change in the degree makes a change in the kind. Usually this is otherwise; the prevailing rule is, that the principle subsists unaffected by any possible variation in the amount or degree of the force. But a large class of exceptions must have met the reader, though from want of a pencil he has improperly omitted to write them down in his pocket-book -- cases, namely, where upon passing beyond a certain point in the graduation, an alteration takes place suddenly in the kind of effect, a new direction is given to the power. Some illustration of this truth occurs in conversation, where a velocity in the movement of thought is made possible (and often natural), greater than ever can arise in methodical books; and where, secondly, approximations are more obvious and easily effected between things too remote for a steadier contemplation. One remarkable evidence of a specific power lying hid in conversation may be seen in such writings as have moved by impulses most nearly resembling those of conversation; for instance, in those of Edmund Burke. For one moment, reader, pause upon the spectacle of two contrasted intellects, Burke's and Johnson's: one an intellect essentially going forward, governed by the very necessity of growth -- by the law of motion in advance; the latter, essentially an intellect retrogressive, retrospective, and throwing itself back on its own steps. This original difference was aided accidentally in Burke by the tendencies of political partisanship, which, both from moving amongst moving things and uncertainties, as compared with the more stationary 6 CONVERSATION. ary aspects of moral philosophy, and also from its more fluctuating and fiery passions, must unavoidably reflect in greater life the tumultuary character of conversation. The result from these original differences of intellectual constitution, aided by these secondary differences of pursuit, is, that Dr. Johnson never, in any instance, GROWS a truth before your eyes, whilst in the act of delivering it or moving towards it. All that he offers up to the end of the chapter he had when he began. But to Burke, such was the prodigious elasticity of his thinking, equally in his conversation and in his writing, the mere act of movement became the principles or cause of movement. Motion propagated motion, and life threw off life. The very violence of a projectile, as thrown by him, caused it to rebound in fresh forms, fresh angles, splintering, coruscating, which gave out thoughts as new (and that would at the beginning have been as startling) to himself as they are to his reader. In this power, which might be illustrated largely from the writings of Burke, is seen something allied to the powers of a prophetic seer, who is compelled oftentimes into seeing things, as unexpected by himself as by others. Now, in conversation, considered as to its tendencies and capacities, there sleeps an intermitting spring of such sudden revelation, showing much of the same general character; a power putting on a character essentially differing from the character worn by the power of books. if, then, in the colloquial commerce of though, there lurked a power not shared by other modes of that great commerce, a power separate and sui generis, next it was apparent that a great art must exist somewhere, applicable to this power; not wrought quarries of men's minds, so many and so dark. There was an art missing. If an art, then an artist missing. If the art (as we say of foreign mails) were "due", then the artist was "due." How happened it that this great man never made his appearance? but perhaps he had. Many people think Dr. Johnson the exemplar of conversational power. I think otherwise, for reasons which I shall soon explain, and far sooner I should look for such an exemplar in Burke. But neither Johnson nor Burke, however they might rank as powers, was the artist that I demanded. Burke valued not at all the reputation of a great performer in conversation; he scarcely contemplated the skill as having a real existence; and a man will never be an artist who does not value his art, CONVERSATION. 7 or even recognize it as an object distinctly defined. Johnson, again, relied sturdily upon his natural powers for carrying him aggressively through all conversational occasions or difficulties that English society, from its known character and composition, could be supposed likely to bring forward, without caring for any art or system of rules that might give further effect to that power. If a man is strong enough to knock down ninety-nine in a hundreds of all antagonists, in spite of any advantages as to pugilistic science which they may possess over himself, he is not likely to care for the improbable case of a hundredth man appearing with strength equal to his own, superadded to the utmost excess of that artificial skill which is wanting in himself. Against such a contingency it is not worth while going to the cost of a regular pugilistic training. Half a century might not bring up a case of actual call for its application. Or if it did, for a single extra case of that nature, there would always be a resource in the extra (and, strictly speaking, foul) arts of kicking, scratching, pinching, and tearing hair. The conversational powers of Johnson were narrow in compass, however strong within their own essential limits. As a conditio sine quâ non, he did not absolutely demand a personal contradictor by way of "stoker" to supply fuel and keep up his steam, but he demanded at least a subject teeming with elements of known contradictory opinion, whether linked to partisanship or not. His views of all things tended to negation, never to the positive and the creative. Hence may be explained a fact, which cannot have escaped any keen observer of those huge Johnsonian memorabilia which we possess, namely, that the gyration of his flight upon any one question that ever came before him was so exceedingly brief. There was no process, no evolution, no movements of self-conflict or preparation;-a word, a distinction, a pointed antithesis, and, above all, a new abstraction of the logic involved in some popular fallacy, or doubt, or prejudice, or problem, formed the utmost of his efforts. He dissipated some casual perplexity that had gathered in the eddies of conversation, but he contributed nothing to any weighted interest; he unchoked a strangulated sewer in some blind alley, but what river is there that felt his cleansing power? There is no man that can cite any single error which Dr. Johnson unmasked, or any important truth which he expanded. Nor is this extraordinary. Dr. Johnson had not 8 Conversation. within himself the fountain of such power, having not a brooding or naturally philosophic intellect. Philosophy in any acquired sense he had none. How else could it have happened that, upon David Hartley, upon David Hume, upon Voltaire, upon Rousseau, the true or the false philosophy of his own day, beyond a personal sneer, founded on some popular slander, he had nothing to say and said nothing? A new world was molding itself in Dr. Johnson's meridian hours, new generations were ascending, and "other palms were won." Yet all of this the Doctor suspected nothing. Countrymen and contemporaries of the Doctor's, brilliant men, but (as many think) trifling men, such as Horace Walpole and Lord Chesterfield, already in the middle of that eighteenth century, could read the signs of the great changes advancing, already started in horror from the portents which rose before them in Paris, like the procession of regal phantoms before Macbeth, and have left in their letters records undeniable (such as now read the Cassandra prophecies) that already they had noticed tremors in the ground below their feet, and sounds in the air, running before the great convulsions under which Europe was destined to rock, full thirty years later. Many instances, during the last war, showed us that in the frivolous dandy might often lurk the most fiery and accomplished of aides-de-camp; and these cases show that men, in whom the world sees only elegant roues, sometimes from carelessness, sometimes from want of opening for display, conceal qualities of penetrating sagacity, and a learned spirit of observation, such as may be looked for vainly in persons of more solemn and academic pretension. But there was a greater defect in Dr. Johnson, for purposes of conversation, than merely want of eye for the social phenomena rising around him. He had no eye for such phenomena, because he had a somnolent want of interest in them; and why? because he had little interest in man. Having no sympathy with human nature in its struggles, or faith in the progress of man, he could not be supposed to regard with much interest any force running symptoms of changes that to him were themselves indifferent. And the reason that he felt thus careless was the desponding taint in his blood. It is good to be of a melancholic temperament, as all the ancient physiologists held, but only if the melancholy is balanced by fiery aspiring qualities, not when it gravitates essentially to the earth. Hence the drooping, desponding character, and the monotony of the Conversation. 9 estimate which Dr. Johnson applied to life. We were all, in his views, miserable, scrofulous wretches; the "strumous diathesis" was developed in our flesh, or soon would be; and, but for his piety, which was the best indication of some greatness latent within him, he would have suggested to all mankind a nobler use for garters than any which regarded knees. In fact, I believe, that but for is piety, he would not only have counseled hanging in general, but hanged himself in particular. Now, this gloomy temperament, not as an occasional but as a permanent state, is fatal to the power of brilliant conversation, in so far as that power rests upon raising a continual succession of topics, and not merely of using with lifeless talent the topics offered by others. Man is the central interest about which revolve all the fleeting phenomena of life; these secondary interests demand the first; and with the little knowledge about them which must follow from little care about them, there can be no salient fountain of conversational themes. Pectus-id est quod disertum facil. From the heart, from an interest of love or hatred, of hope or care, springs all permanent eloquence; and the elastic spring of conversation is gone, if the talker is a mere showy man of talent, pulling at an oar which he detests. What an index might be drawn up of subjects interesting to human nature, and suggested by the events of the Johnsonian period, upon which the Doctor ought to have talked, and must have talked if his interest in man had been catholic, but on which the Doctor is not recorded to have uttered on word! Visiting Paris once in his life, he applied himself diligently to the measuring- of what? OF gilt moldings and diapered panels! Yet books, it will be said, suggest topics as well as life, and the moving sceneries of life. And surely Dr. Johnson has this fund to draw upon? No; for, though he had read much in a desultory way, he had studied nothing*; and, without that sort of systematic reading, it is but a rare chance that cooks can be brought bear effectually, and yet ____________________________________________________________ *"Had studied nothing.- It may be doubted whether Dr. Johnson understood any one thing thoroughly, except Latin; not that he understood even that with the elaborate and circumstantial accuracy required for the editing critically of a Latin classic. But if he had less than that, he also had more; he possessed that language in a way that no extent of mere critical knowledge could confer. He wrote it genially, not as one translating into it painfully from English, but as one using it for his original organ of thinking. And in Latin verse he expressed himself at times with the energy and freedom of a Roman. With Greek his acquaintance was far more slender. 10 CONVERSATION. indirectly, upon conversation; whilst to make them directly and formally the subjects of discussion, presupposes either a learned audience, or, if the audience is not so, much pedantry and much arrogance in the talker. --- SECOND PAPER. The flight of our human hours, not really more rapid at any one moment than another, yet oftentimes to our feelings seems more rapid, and this flight startles us like guilty things with a more affecting sense of its rapidity, when a distant church-clock strikes in the night-time, or when, upon some solemn summer evening, the sun's disk, after settling for a minute with farewell horizontal rays, suddenly drops out of sight. The record of our loss in such a case seems to us the first intimation of its possibility; as if we could not be made sensible that the hours were perishable until it is announced to us that already they have perished. We feel a perplexity of distress when that which seems to us the cruelest of injuries, a robbery committed upon our dearest possession by the conspiracy of the world outside, seems also as in part a robbery sanctioned by our own collusion. The world, and the customs of the world, never cease to levy taxes upon our time; that is true, and so far the blame is not ours; but the particular degree in which we suffer by this robbery depends much upon the weakness with which we ourselves become parties to the wrong, or the energy with which we resist it. Resisting or not, however, we are doomed to suffer a bitter pang as often as the irrecoverable flight of our time is brought home with keenness to our hearts. The spectacle of a lady floating over the sea in a boat, and waking suddenly from sleep to find her magnificent ropes of pearl-necklace by some accident detached at one end from its fastenings, the loose string hanging down into the water, and pearl after pearl slipping off forever into the abyss, brings before us the sadness of the case. That particular pearl, which at the very moment is rolling off into the unsearchable deeps, carries its own separate reproach to the lady's heart. But it is more deeply reproachful as the representative of so many others, uncounted pearls, that have already been swallowed up irrevocably whilst she was yet sleeping, and of CONVERSATION. 11 many beside that must follow before any remedy can be applied to what we may call this jewelly hemorrhage. A constant hemorrhage of the same kind is wasting our jewelly hours. A day has perished from our brief calendar of days, and that we could endure; but this day is no more than the reiteration of many other days, days counted by thousands, that have perished to the same extent and by the same unhappy means, namely, the evil usages of the world made effectual and ratified by our own lacheté. Bitter is the upbraiding which we seem to hear from a secret monitor, -- "My friend, you make very free with your days; pray, how many do you expect to have? What is your rental, as regards the total harvest of days which this life is likely to yield?" Let us consider. Three-score years and ten produce a total sum of twenty-five thousand five hundred and fifty days; to say nothing of some seventeen or eighteen more that will be payable to you as a bonus on account of leap-years. Now, out of this total, one third must be deducted as a blow for a single item, namely, sleep. Next, on account of illness, of recreation, and the serious occupations spread over the surface of life, it will be little enough to deduct another third. Recollect also that twenty years will have gone from the earlier end of your life (namely, above seven thousand days) before you can have attained any skill or system, or any definite purpose, in the distribution of your time. Lastly, for that single item which, amongst the Roman armies, was indicated by the technical phrase "corpus curare," tendance on the animal necessities, namely, eating, drinking, washing, bathing, and exercise, deduct the smallest allowance consistent with propriety, and, upon summing up all these appropriations, you will not find so much as four thousand days left disposable for direct intellectual culture. Four thousand, or forty hundreds, will be hundred forties; that is, according to the lax Hebrew method of indicating six weeks by the phrase of "forty days," you will have a hundred bills of drafts on Father Time, value six weeks each, as the whole period available for intellectual labor. A solid block of about eleven and a half continuous years is all that a long life will furnish for the development of what is most august in man's nature. After that, the night comes when no man can work; brain and arm will be alike unserviceable; or, if the life should be unusually extended, the vital powers will be drooping as regards all motions in advance. 12 Conversation. Limited thus severely in his direct approaches to knowledge, and in his approaches to that which is a thousand times more important than knowledge, namely, the conduct and discipline of the knowing faculty, the more clamorous is the necessity that a wise man should turn to account any INDIRECT and supplementary means towards the same ends; and amongst these means a chief one by right and potentially is CONVERSATION. Even the primary means, books, study, and meditation, through errors from without and errors from within, are not that which they might be made. Too constantly, when reviewing his own efforts for improvement, a man has reason to say (indignantly, as one injured by others; penitentially, as contributing to this injury himself), "Much of my studies have been thrown away; many books which were useless, or worse than useless, I have read; many books which ought to have been read, I have left unread; such is the sad necessity under the absence of all preconceived plan; and the proper road is first ascertained when the journey is drawing to its close." In a wilderness so vast as that of books, to go astray often and widely is pardonable, because it is inevitable; and in proportion as the errors on this primary field of study have been great, it is important to have reaped some compensatory benefits on the secondary field of conversation. Books teach by one machinery, conversation by another; and if these resources were trained into correspondence to their own separate ideals, they might become reciprocally the complements of each other. The false selection of books, for instance, might often be rectified at once by the frank collation of experiences which takes place in miscellaneous colloquial intercourse. But other and greater advantages belong to conversation for the effectual promotion of intellectual culture. Social discussion supplies the natural integration for the deficiencies of private and sequestered study. Simply to rehearse, simply to express in words amongst familiar friends, one's own intellectual perplexities, is oftentimes to clear them up. It is well known that the best means of learning is by teaching; the effort that is made for others is made eventually for ourselves; and the readiest method of illuminating obscure conceptions, or maturing such as are crude, lies in an earnest effort to make them apprehensible by others. Even this is but one amongst the functions fulfilled by conversation. Each separate individual in a company is likely to see any problem or idea under some difference of angle. Each may have some difference of views Conversation. 13 to contribute, derived either from a different course of reading, or a different tenor of reflection, or perhaps a different train of experience. The advantages of colloquial discussion are not only often commensurate in degree to those of study, but they recommend themselves also as being different in kind; they are special and sui generis. It must, therefore, be important that so great an organ of intellectual development should not be neutralized by mismanagement, as generally it is, or neglected through insensibility to its latent capacities. The importance of the subject should be measured by its relation to the interests of the intellect; and on this principle we do not scruple to think that, in reviewing or own experience of the causes most commonly at war with the free movement of conversation as it ought to be, we are in effect contributing hints for a new chapter in any future "Essay on the Improvement of the Mind." Watts' book under that title is really of little practical use, nor would it ever have been thought so had it not been patronized, in a spirit of partisanship, by a particular section of religious dissenters. Wherever that happens, the fortune of a book is made; for the sectarian impulse creates a sensible current in favor of the book; and the general or neutral reader yields passively to the motion of the current, without knowing or caring to know whence it is derived. Our remarks must of necessity be cursory here, so that they will not need or permit much preparation; but one distinction, which is likely to strike on some minds, as to the two different purposes of conversation, ought to be noticed, since otherwise it will seem doubtful whether we have not confounded them; or, secondly, if we have not confounded them, which of the two t is that our remarks contemplate. In speaking above of conversation, we have fixed our view on those uses of conversation which are ministerial to intellectual culture; but, in relation to the majority of men, conversation as a means of advancing his studies, there are fifty men whose interest in conversation points exclusively to convivial pleasure. This, as being a more extensive function of conversation, is so far the more dignified function; whilst, on the other hand, such a purpose as direct mental improvement seems by its superior gravity to challenge the higher rank. Yet, in fact, even here the more general purpose of conversa- 14 CONVERSATION. tion takes precedency; for, when dedicated to the objects of festal delight, conversation rises by its tendency to the rank of a fine art. It is true that not one man in a million rises to any distinction in this art; nor, whatever France may conceit of herself, has any one nation, amongst other nations, a real precedency in this art. The artist are rate indeed; but still the art, as distinguished from the artist, may, by its difficulties, by the quality of its graces, and by the range of its possible brilliances, take rank as a fine art; or, at all events, according to its powers of execution, it tends to that rank; whereas the best order of conversation that is simply ministerial to a purpose of use, cannot pretend to a higher name than that of a mechanic art. But these distinctions, through they would form the grounds of a separate treatment in a regular treatise on conversation, may be practically neglected on this occasion, because the hints offered, by the generality of the terms in which they express themselves, maybe applied indifferently to either class of conversation. The main diseases, indeed, which obstruct the healthy movement of conversation, recur everywhere; and alike whether the object be pleasure or profit in the free interchange of thought, almost universally that free interchange is obstructed in the very same way, by the very same defect of any controlling principle for sustaining the general rights and interests of the company, and by the same vices of self-indulgent indolence, or of callous selfishness, or of insolent vanity, in the individual talkers. Let us fall back on the recollections of our own experience. In the course of our life we have heard much of what was reputed to be the select conversation of the day, and we have heard many of those who figured at the moment as effective talkers; ye in mere sincerity, and without a vestige of misanthropic retrospect, we must say, that never once has it happened to us to come away from any display of that nature without intense disappointment; and it always appeared to us that this failure (which soon ceased to be a disappointment) was inevitable by a necessity of the case. For here lay the stress of the difficulty; almost all depends, in most trials of skill, upon the parity of those who are marched against each other. An ignorant person supposes that, to be an able disputant, it must be an advantage to have a feeble opponent; whereas, on the contrary, it is ruin to him; for he cannot display his own powers but through something of a corresponding power in the resistance of his antagonist. A brilliant CONVERSATION. 15 fencer is lost and confounded in playing with a novice; and the same thing takes place in playing at ball, or battledore, or in dancing, where a powerless partner does not enable you to shine the more, but reduces you to mere helplessness, and takes the wind altogether out of your sails. Now, if by some rate good luck the great talker- the protagonist- of the evening has been provided with a commensurate second, it is just possible that something like a brilliant "passage of arms" may be the result, through much, even in that case, will depend on the changes of the moment for furnishing a fortunate theme; and even then, amongst the superior part of the company, a feeling of deep vulgarity and of mountebank display is inseparable from such an ostentatious duel of wit. On the other hand, supposing your great talker to be received like any other visitor, and turned loose upon the company, then he must do one of two things; either he will talk upon outre subject specially tabooed to his own private use, in which case the great man has the air of a quack-doctor addressing a mob from a street stage; or else he will talk like ordinary people upon popular topics; in which case the company, out of natural politeness, that they may not seem to be staring at him as a lion, will hasten to meet him in the same style; the conversation will become general; the great man will seem reasonable and well-bred; but, at the same time, we grieve to say it, the great man will have been extinguished by being drawn off from his exclusive goal. The dilemma, in short, is this: if the great talked attempts to plan of showing off by firing cannon-shot when everybody else is contented with musketry, then undoubtedly he produces an impression, but at the expense of insulating himself from the sympathies of the company, and standing aloof as a sort of monster hired to play tricks of funambulism for the night. Yet again, if he contents himself with a musket like other people, then for us, form whom he modestly hides his talent under a bushel, in what respect is he different from the man who has no such talent? "If she be not fair to me, What care I how fair she be?" The reader, therefore, may take it upon the a priori logic of this dilemma, or upon the evidence of our own experience, that all reputation for brilliant talking is a visionary thing, and rests upon a sheer impossibility, namely, upon such a histrionic performance in a state of insulation from the rest. 16 CONVERSATION of the company as could not be effected, even for a single time, without a rare and difficult collusion, and could not, even for that single time, be endurable to a man of delicate and honorable sensibilities. Yet surely Coleridge had such a reputation, and without needing any collusion at all; for Coleridge, unless he could have all the talk, would have none. But then this was not conversation; it was not colloquium, or talking with the company, but alloquium, or talking to the company. As Madame de Staël observed, Coleridge talked, and could talk, only by monologue. Such a mode of systematic trespass upon the conversational rights of the whole party, gathered together under pretense of amusement, is fatal to every purpose of social intercourse, whether that purpose be connected with direct use and the service of the intellect, or with the general graces and amenities of life. The result is the same, under whatever impulse such an outrage is practiced; but the impulse is not always the same; it varies; and so far the criminal intention varies. In some people this gross excess takes its rise in pure arrogance. They are fully aware of their own intrusion upon the general privileges of the company; they are aware of the temper in which it is likely to be received; but they persist willfully in the wrong, as a sort of homage levied compulsorily upon those who may wish to resist it, but hardly can do so without a violent interruption, wearing the same shape of indecorum as that which they resent. In most people, however, it is not arrogance which prompts this capital offense against social rights, but a blind selfishness, yielding passively to its own instincts, without being distinctly aware of the degree in which this self-indulgence trespasses on the rights of others. We see the same temper illustrated at times in traveling; a brutal person, as we are disposed at first to pronounce him, but more frequently on who yields unconsciously to a lethargy of selfishness, plants himself at the public fireplace, so as to exclude his fellow-travelers from all but a fraction of the warmth. Yet he does not do this in a spirit of willful aggression upon others; he has but a glimmering suspicion of the odious shape which his own act assumes to others, for the luxurious torpor of self-indulgence has extended its mists to the energy and clearness of his perceptions. Meantime, Coleridge's habit of soliloquizing through a whole evening of four or five hours had its origin neither in arrogance nor in absolute selfishness. The fact was that he could CONVERSATION 17 not talk unless he were uninterrupted, and unless he were able to count upon this concession from the company. It was a silent contract between him and his hearers, that nobody should speak but himself. If any man objected to this arrangement, why did he come? For the custom of the place, the lex loci, being notorious, by coming at all he was understood to profess his allegiance to the autocrat who presided. It was not, therefore, by an insolent usurpation that Coleridge persisted on monology through his whole life, but in virtue of a concession from the kindness and respect of his friends. you could not be angry with him for using his privilege, for it was a privilege conferred by others, and a privilege which he was ready to resign as soon as any man demurred to it. But though reconciled to it by these considerations, and by the ability with which he used it, you could not but feel that it worked ill for all parties. Himself it tempted oftentimes into pure garrulity of egotism, and the listeners it reduced to a state of debilitated sympathy or of absolute torpor. Prevented by the custom from putting questions, from proposing doubts, from asking for explanations, reacting by no mode of mental activity, and condemned also to the mental distress of hearing opinions or doctrines stream past them by flights which they must not arrest for a moment, so as even to take a note of them, and which yet they could not often understand, or, seeming to understand, could not always approve, the audience sank at times into a listless condition of inanimate vacuity. To be acted upon forever, but never to react, is fatal to the very powers by which sympathy must grow, or by which intelligent admiration can be evoked. For his own sake, it was Coleridge's interest to have forced his hearers into the active commerce of question and answer, of objection and demur. Not otherwise was it possible that even the attention could be kept from drooping, or the coherency and dependency of the arguments be forced into the light. The French rarely make a mistake of this nature. The graceful levity of the nation could not easily err in this direction, nor tolerate such deliration in the greatest of men. Not the gay temperament only of the French people, but the particular qualities of the French language, which (however poor for the higher purposes of passion) is rich beyond all others for purposes of social intercourse, prompt them to rapid and vivacious exchange of thought. Tediousness, therefore, above all other vices, finds no countenance or indulgence amongst the French, 18 CONVERSATION. excepting always in two memorable cases, namely, first, the case of tragic dialogue on the stage, which is privileged to be tedious by usage and tradition; and, secondly, the case (authorized by the best usages in living society) of narrators or raconteurs. This is a shocking anomaly in the code of French good taste as applied to conversation. Of all the bores whom man in his folly hesitates to hang, and heaven in its mysterious wisdom suffers to propagate their species, the most insufferable is the teller of "good stories,"- a nuisance that should be put down by cudgeling,by submersion in horse-ponds, or any mode of abatement, as summarily as men would combine to suffocate a vampire or a mad dog. This case excepted, however, the French have the keenest possible sense of all that is odious and all that is ludicrous in prosing, and universally have a horror of des longuers. it is not strange, therefore, that Madame De Stael noticed little as extraordinary in Coleridge beyond this one capital monstrosity of unlimited soliloquy, that being a peculiarity which she never could have witnessed in France: and, considering the burnish of her French tastes in all that concerned colloquial characteristics, it is creditable to her forbearance that she noticed even this rather as a memorable fact than as the inhuman fault which it was. On the other hand, Coleridge was not so forbearing as regarded the brilliant French lady. He spoke of her to ourselves as a very frivolous person, and in short summary terms that disdained to linger upon a subject so inconsiderable. It is remarkable that Goethe and Schiller both conversed with Madame de Stael, like Coleridge, and both spoke of her afterwards in the same disparaging terms as Coleridge. But it is equally remarkable that Baron William Humboldt, who was personally acquainted with all the four parties,- Madame de Stael, Goethe, Schiller , and Coleridge-gave it as his opinion (in letters subsequently published) that the lady had been calumniated through a very ignoble cause, namely, merely ignorance of the French language, or, at least, non familiarity with the fluencies of oral French. Neither Goethe nor Schiller, though well acquainted with written French, had any command of it for purposes of rapid conversation; and Humboldt supposes that mere spite at the trouble which they found in limping after the lady so as to catch one thought that she uttered, had been the true cause of their unfavorable sentence upon her. Not malice aforethought, so much as vindictive fury for the sufferings they had endured, accounted for their severity in the opinion of the diplomatic CONVERSATION. 19 baron. He did not extend the same explanation to Coleridge's case, because, though even then in habits of intercourse with Coleridge, he had not heard of his interview with the lady, nor of the results from that interview; else what was true of the two German wits was true a fortiori of Coleridge ; the Germans at least read French and talked it slowly, and occasionally understood it when talked by others. But Coleridge did none of these things. We are all of us well aware that Madame de Stael was not a trifler; nay, that she gave utterance at times to truths as worthy to be held oracular as any that were uttered by the three inspired wits-all philosophers, and bound to truth-but all poets, and privileged to be wayward. This we may collect from these anecdotes, that people accustomed to colloquial despotism, and who wield a scepter within a circle of their own, are no longer capable of impartial judgements, and do not accommodate themselves with patience, or even with justice, to the pretensions of rivals; and were it only for this result of conversational tyranny, it calls clamorously for extinction by some combined action upon the part of society. Is such a combination on the part of society possible as a sustained effort? We imagine that it is in these times, and will be more so in the times which are coming. Formerly the social meetings of men and women, except only in capital cities, were few; and even in such cities the infusion of female influence was not broad and powerful enough for the correction of those great aberrations from just ideals which disfigured social intercourse. But great changes are proceeding; were it only by the vast revolution in our means of intercourse, laying open every village to the contagion of social temptations, the world of western Europe is tending more and more to a mode of living in public. Under such a law of life, conversation be- comes a vital interest of every hour, that can no more suffer interruption from individual caprice or arrogance than the animal process of respiration from transient disturbances of health. Once, when traveling was rare, there was no fixed law for the usages of public rooms in inns or coffee-houses; the courtesy of individuals was the tenure by which men held their rights. If a morose person detained the newspaper for hours, there was no remedy. At present, according to the circum- stances of the case, there are strict regulations, which secure to each individual his own share of the common rights. A corresponding change will gradually take place in the usages which regulate conversation. It will come to be con- [considered] 20 Conversation. sidered an infringement of the general rights for any man to detain the conversation, or arrest its movement, for more than a short space of time, which gradually will be more and more defined. This one curtailment of arrogant pretensions will lead to others. Egotism will no longer freeze the openings to intellectual discussions; and conversation will then become, what it never has been before, a powerful ally of education, and generally of self-culture. The main diseases that besiege conversation at present are-1st. The want of timing. Those who are not recalled, by a sense of courtesy and equity, to the continual remembrance that, in appropriating too large a share of the conversation, they are committing a fraud upon their companions, are beyond all control of monitory hints or of re-proof, which does not take a direct and open shape of personal remonstrance; but this, where the purpose of the assembly is festive and convivial, bears too harsh an expression for most people's feelings. That objection, however, would not apply to any mode of admonition that was universally established. A public memento carries with it no personality. For instance, in the Roman law-courts, no advocate complained of the clepsy-dra, or water timepiece, which regulated the duration of his pleadings. Now, such a contrivance would not be impracticable at an after-dinner talk. To invert the clepsydra, when all the water had run out, would be an act open to any one of the guests, and liable to no misconstruction, when this check was generally applied, and understood to be a simple expression of public defense, not of private rudeness or personality. The clepsydra ought to be filled with some brilliantly-colored fluid, to be placed in the center of the table, and with the capacity, at the very most, of the little minute-glasses used for regulating the boiling of eggs. It would obviously be insupportably tedious to turn the glass every two or three minutes; but to do so occasionally would avail as a sufficient memento to the company. 2d. Conversation suffers from the want of some discretional power lodged in an individual for controlling its movements. Very often it sinks into flats of insipidity through mere accident. Some trifle has turned its current upon ground where few of the company have anything to say-the commerce of though languishes; and the consciousness that it is languishing about a narrow circle, "unde pedem proferre pudor vetat," operates for the general refrigeration of the company. Now, the ancient Greeks had an officer appointed over every convivial meeting, whose functions applied to all cases of doubt Conversation. 21 or interruption that could threaten the genial harmony of the company. We also have such officers-presidents, vice-presidents, etc.; and we need only to extend their powers, so that they may exercise over the movement of the conversation the beneficial influence of the Athenian symposiarch. At present the evil is, that conversation has no authorized originator; it is servile to the accidents of the moment; and generally these accidents are merely verbal. Some word or some name is dropped casually in the course of an illustration; and that is allowed to suggest a topic, though neither interesting to the majority of the persons present, nor leading naturally into other collateral topics that are more so. Now, in such cases it will be the business of the symposiarch to restore the interest of the conversation, and to rekindle its animation, by recalling it from any tracks of dullness or sterility into which its may have rambled. The natural excursiveness of colloquial intercourse, its tendency to advance by subtle links of association, is one of its advantages; but mere vagrancy from passive acquiescence in the direction given to it by chance or by any verbal accident, is amongst its worst diseases. The business of the symposiarch will be, to watch these morbid tendencies, which are not the deviations of graceful freedom, but the distortions of imbecility and collapse. His business it will also be to derive occasions of discussion hearing a general and permanent interest from the fleeting events of the casual disputes of the day. His business again it will be to bring back a subject that has been imperfectly discussed, and has yielded but half of the interest which it promises, under the interruption of any accident which may have carried the thoughts of the party into less attractive channels. Lastly, it should be an express office of education to form a particular style, cleansed from verbiage, from elaborate parenthesis, and from circumlocution, 'as the only style fitted for a purpose which is one of pure enjoyment, and where every moment used by the speaker is deducted from a public stock. Many other suggestions for the improvement of conversation might be brought forward within ampler limits; and especially for that class of conversation which moves by discussion a whole code of regulations might be proposed, that would equally promote the interests of the individual speakers and the public interests of the truth involved in the question discussed. Meantime nobody is more aware than we are that no style of conversation is more essentially vulgar than that 22 CONVERSATION. which moves by disputation. This is the vice of the young and the inexperienced, but especially of those amongst them who are fresh from academic life. But discussion is not necessarily disputation; and the two orders of conversation-that, on the one hand, which contemplates an interest of knowledge, and of the self-developing intellect; that, on the other hand, which forms one and the widest amongst the gay embellishments of life-will always advance together. Whatever there may remain of illiberal in the first (for, according to the remark of Burke, there is always something illiberal in the severer aspects of study until balanced by the influence of social amenities), will correct itself, or will tend to correct itself, by the model held up in the second; and thus the great organ of social intercourse, by means of speech, which hitherto has done little for man, except through the channel of its ministrations to the direct business of daily necessities, will at length rise into a rivalship with books, and become fixed amongst the alliances of intellectual progress, not less than amongst the ornamental accomplishments of convivial life. THOMAS DE QUINCEY. Complete Works. Globe Edition. Complete in Six Volumes, 12mo, cloth, aggregating over 7500 pages. Long Primer type, leaded. Price per set, reduced from $10.00 to $6.50. BRIEF SUMMARY OF CONTENTS. Confessions of an English Opium Eater, and Kindred Papers. Autobiographic Sketches, Literary Reminiscences. Literary Criticism. The Eighteenth Century in Literature and Scholarship. Biographical and Historical Essays. Essays in Ancient History and Antiquities. Essays on Christianity, Paganism, and Superstition. Essays in Philosophy. Politics and Political Economy. Romances and Extravaganzas. Narrative and Miscellaneous Papers. De Quincey's place in literature is unique. He stands alone, incomparable with any other, as do Carlyle and Shakespeare. A library that does not include his works lacks an important and peculiar literary quality which no other author supplies. This edition is the one published by a well-known Boston house, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., is the most complete ever made, and I can certainly supply only the limited stock now in hand, at this great bargain. The "Globe" page is a little smaller than that of THE IRVING LIBRARY; the type used is one size larger. Victorious Revolution. 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Fractions of one dollar can be sent in postage-stamps. Confessions of an Opium-Eater. By Thomas De Quincey. New Elzevir Edition. Brevier type, leaded. Price, in paper 10 cents: in fine cloth, red edges, ornamented, 25 cents. A gem of a volume, and one of the most remarkable in the literature of the century. "It is no Opium in De Quincey, but De Quincey in Opium, that wrote."-GILFILLAN. "Mr. De Quincey must rank high in the entire list of British prose writers."-KNIGHT'S Encyclopoedia. "Unequalled perhaps, for brevity, pungency and force."- McCULLOCH A FAMOUS GALAXY. I publish also the following famous works, the Dickens, Thackeray, Waverley, Eliot, Bulwer, and Black being uniform with the NEW CAXTON IRVING, elsewhere fully described; profuse and fine illustrations being added in some of them. 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The volumes contain as follows: A New Theory of the Sun. C.W. Siemens Oiling the Waves. C. F. Gordon Cumming Tourgenieff's Novels. Macmillan's Mag Ralph Waldo Emerson. N.Y. Tribune In the Himalayas. Rev. Joseph Cook A Liverpool Address. Matthew Arnold Dean Stanley. Canon F.W. Farrar Comets. R.A. Proctor What can India Teach us? F. Max Muller Atoms, Molecules, Ether Waves. J. Tyndall A Gossip on Romance. R.L Stevenson Earth in Meteoric Shadow. R.A. Proctor John Harrison. Samuel Smiles The Hamlet Saga. Count de Falbe Matter and Mind. Lord Bishop of Carlisle Evolution in Music. Vernon Lee The Americans. Herbert Spencer Panislamism and the Caliphate A Study of Longfellow Henry Norman Alcwine, Cornhill Magazine The Impressionists. Frederick Wedmore Anthony Trollope. Edward A. Freeman The New Pygmalion. A. Lang Gambetta. By a Friend - By a German The Art of Rossetti. Harry Quilter The House of Lords. Edward A. Freeman Mexico and Her Railroads. J.Y. 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The list of publications on this and the next following page, is of books which will no longer be published in the forms represented after the supply now in hand is exhausted. To close them out rapidly, and make room for other publications, I offer them at discounts varying from 20 per cent, to 60 per cent, below the former published prices -- often far below actual cost of manufacture. The former price is first given, followed by the new net price in the column. The books will be sent by express or freight at the NET prices affixed, of BY MAIL at 20 per cent, advance upon the net prices. All books are in cloth binding unless otherwise stated. Cyclopedias. Chambers's Encyclopaedia. New American handy volume edition, revised, 12 vols., cloth, price $18, reduced to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 00 American Additions to Chambers's Encyclopaedia. 4 vols., octavo, large type, cloth, $4.80 . . . . . . . . . . 2 80 The same, vol. IV only, $1.20 . . . . 70 The same, in half Russia, $6.80 . . 4 00 Chambers's Cyclopedia of English Literature. Aldus edition, 8 vols., in 4, half Russia, gilt top, $4.50 .. 2 75 Biography. Life of Washington, By Henley. 35c. 25 Life of Marion. 35c . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Life of Cromwell. E. Paxton Hood. 35c 25 The same in paper, 15c . . . . . . . . 8 Lives of Washington, Marion and Cromwell, in one volume, 70c . . . 50 The same, in half Russia, 90c . . . . 65 Reminiscences of Thomas Carlyle. Aldus edition, half Russia, 69c . . . 40 Brief Biographies, By Samuel Smiles. Acme edition, cloth, 30c . . . . . . . . . 25 The same, Aldus edition, half Russia, gilt top, 57c . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Ancient Classics. Herodotus, Swayne. Half Russia, 40c 25 Cicero, W. L. Collins, Half Russia, 40c 25 Fiction. Hypatia. By Charles Kingsley, 42c . . . 25 Charles Lever's Choice Works, $3.50. 1 25 History. Hume's England, 3 vols., cloth $5 . . . 3 75 Gibbon's Rome with Milman's notes. Aldus edition, 5 vols., half Russia, gilt top, $4.52 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 50 Gibbon's Rome, 2 vols., 12mo., half Russia, $2.50 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 00 Milman's Notes to Gibbon, h. R., $1. . 75 Grote's Greece. Acme ed. 4 vols., $2.321 75 " " 4 vols., half Russia, red edges, $4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 20 Kenrick's Ancient Egypt, half R. $1.50 1 20 Rollin's Ancient History, 4 vols., half Russia, $4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 20 Green's Larger History of the English People, Model Octavo, half Rus- sia, $1.25 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 The same, Elzevir edition, 5 vols., half Russia, $2.50 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 00 Schiller's Thirty Years' War and Creasy's Decisive Battles, one vol., Model Octavo, cloth 60c . . . . . . . . . . . 45 The same, in half Russia, 80c . . 60 Carlyle's History of the French Rev- solution. Model Octavo, cloth 60c. 45 The same, in half Russia, 80c. . . . . 60 Same, Elzevir, half Russia, $1.20 90 Religious Literature. Young's Bible Concordance, Scholar's edition, half Russia, red edges, $4.31 2 75 The same, bound in half Turkey Morocco, marbled edges, $5.31 3 50 Same, popular ed'n, half R . . . . . . . . . 2 25 New Testament. Old and New ver- sions on pages facing. Acme, 63c 25 The same, finer, red edges, 93c . . . 35 New Testament, new version, 36c . . . 20 Kitto's Cyclopedia of Biblical Litera- ture. 2 vols., illus., cloth, $2.36 . . . . . . 1 50 Poetical Works. Shakespeare, Acme ed., 3 vols., $1.80 1 00 The same, Aldus edition, extra cloth, ornamented, $2.95 . . . . . . . . . . . 1 50 Mrs. Hemans' Poetical Works. Large octavo, cloth, 78c . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Same, half Russia, gilt top, #1.03 60 Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered. Acme edition, cloth 48c . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 The same, Aldus edition, extra cloth, ornamented, 72c . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 M'Fingal. By John Trumbull, with notes by Benson J. Lossing. Aldus edition, cloth, ornamented, 59c . . . . . . 40 Homer's Odyssey. Translated by Pope. Aldus edition, extra cloth, ornamented, 58c . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Arnold's Light of Asia. Half R., 40c. 25 Of the following poets, more fully de- scribed in the catalogue. I have editions bound in half Russia, red edges, at the prices affixed Aytoun and Macau- lay 60c Arnold, 60c Campbell, 50c Chaucer, 70c Coleridge, 70c Crabbe, 60c Eliot, 50c Goethe, including Faust, 80c CLEARANCE CATALOGUE.–– Continued. Hemans, 60c / Poetry of Flowers, / IRVING'S CHOICE WORKS. ELZEVIR. Herbert, 60c / 60c Homer's Iliad and/ Proctor, 55c / Crayon Papers, and Life. 40c.......... 30 Odyssey, 80c/ Rogers, 50c / The same, half Russia, 50c............. 38 Hood, 60c/ Schiller, 50c / The same, cloth, gilt edges, 60c. 45 Keats, 50c/ Shakespeare, 85c / Also, The Alhambra, The Sketch Book Moore, 70c/Thomson, 55c / and Life of Goldsmith, uniform in style Ossian,60c/ H. Kirk White, 60c / and price with Crayon Papers. / Wordsworth, 70c Wit and Humor. / ELZEVIR CLASSICS: Complete Works of Chas. Lamb, 80c. 60 / Life of Peter Cooper. Half Russia, 35c 25 Choice Works of Dean Swift 80c..... 60 / Life of Sam Houston. Half R., 45c. 30 Choice Works of Thomas Hood. 80c.. 60 / Christian Series, I. Cloth, 25c.......... 20 Noetes Ambrosianae. By Christopher / American Humorists. Half R., 35c...... 25 North. Cloth, 70c. ................ 50 / Poetry Series, I. Cloth, 25c.................. 20 Young Folks' Series. / Hamlet. Half Russia, 25c...................... 20 Rasselas, Vicar of Wakefield, Paul / Indian Song of Songs. Half R., 35c......... 25 and Virginia, Gulliver's Travels, / Pearls of the Faith. Half Russia, 40c 30 and Baron Munchausen, in one volume,/ Science Series, I. Cloth, 25c................. 20 Cloth............................................ 65 / The same, half Russia, 35c................ 25 Child's History of England, by Dickens,/ Young Folk's Series. I. Cloth, 25c........... 20 and France and Germany, by / Words of Washington. Cloth, 15c........... 12 Yonge, in one volume. Cloth, $1. 70 / The Great Bridge. Cloth, 25c.................. 15 The same, half Russia, $1.25.... 90 / The same, half Russia, 35c................... 25 Robinson Crusoe and Arabian Nights,/ Macaulay's Life of Frederick the in one volume, iII. half Russia, $1 75 /Great. Utility binding, 12c.......................... 8 Bunyan's Pilgrims Progress, and /Macaulay's Frederick the Great, Irving Book of Fables, in one vol., 80c...60 / Rip Van Winkle, etc., and The same, half Russia, $1............75 / Words of Washington, in one / volume. Utility binding, 15c................... 10 / Robinson Crusoe, unabridged , paper Miscellaneous. / binding, 15c............................................ 10 Choice of Books. By Richardson. / Shakespeare's Principal Plays, in Acme edition, cloth, 30c...........15 / paper, as follows, each 4c.:.............. 3 The same, Aldus edition, 56c...35 / Henry V.; King John; Romeo Same, half calf, elegant, $1.33..75 / and Juliet; Much Ado About Science in Short Chapters. Half / Nothing. Russia, 65c..............................45 / Choice Prose, octavo. Hair R., $1... 75/ Library Magazine. Irving's Works, model octavo, 2 vols.,/ BOUND VOLUMES cloth, $4....................................2 50 / Vol. S, half Russia, 65c......................... 35 The same, half Russia, $5........ 3 50/ Vols. 4, 5, 6, 7, half R., each 50c.......... 30 "The ten volumes of poetry which I ordered, came in good order. They more than fulfill my expectations." –– P. A. SPAIN, Pilot Point, Texas. "The books shipped came to hand all right, (Bulwer and Black). I have ten sets of authors, the cream of English literature for what two of the most expensive would have cost me at old prices."–– Yours heartily, A. ARMSTRONG, Supt. of Schools, Sioux City, Iowa. "Now it is possible for a man, with five or ten dollars, to procure a very good selection of standard works. John B. Alden is the man who has done more towards bringing down the price of good books than any other. He deserves the support of all in his grand work. In justice we will say that this is not a paid notice, nor do we expect anything for it. Send and get his catalogue, and then invest a dollar or two, and if you are sorry, come to this office, and we will take your purchase off your hands."–– Oxford County Record, Kezar' Falls, Me. A LIBRARY OF HISTORY. A historical event in itself, of no small importance to thousands of readers, is the publication of the great works described below, in such excellent form, at prices so extremely low. LARGER HISTORY of the ENGLISH PEOPLE. BY John Richard Green. Elzevir Edition. In 5 vols., Brevier type, leaded, 2426 pages. Per set, cloth, $1.75. "Green's History is one of the most brilliant and thoroughly valuable historical works which has appeared in many years. Early ranking with Macaulay's great work in the absorbing interest of its narrative, it exceeds that in adaptation to popular needs, in that it covers the entire period of English history from the earliest to modern times, instead of a brief period, as does Macaulay."–– Methodist Recorder, Pittsburg. HISTORY of the FRENCH REVOLUTION. By Thomas Carlyle. Elzevir Edition. Brevier type, leaded, 1228 pages. Per set, cloth. $0 cts. "After perusing the whole of this extraordinary work we can allow, almost to their fullest extent, the high qualities with which Mr. Carlyle's idolaters endow him."–– Times, London. DECISIVE BATTLES of the WORLD, from Marathon to Waterloo. By E. S. Creasy. Elzevir Edition. Brevier type, leaded, 562 pages. Cloth, 40 cts. It may fairly be called a history of the world in itself, since about these turning points of history cluster the great facts of the story of the world's progress. HISTORY of the THIRTY YEARS' WAR in Germany. By Frederick Schiller. Translated by A. J. W. Morrison. Elzevir Edition Brevier type, leaded, 518 pages. Cloth, 40 cts. "An epoch unexcelled, in all the chronicles of time, in the long and terrible fierceness of the conflicts waged, the noble, devoted heroism of those who struggled for the right, and in its far-reaching influence for good, upon the subsequent history of the world; and the story is told by the greatest literary genius of Germany." HISTORICAL "WONDER-BOOK" CONTACTING IN ONE VOLUME, Model Octavo, large Brevier type, beautifully printed and bound, the following works, unabridged: Green's Larger History of the English People; Carlyle's French Revolution; Creasy's Decisive Battles of the World: Schiller's Thirty Years' War in Germany, 1005 pages; price, in half Russia, red edges, $1.50. "A Wonder Book" in the amount and quality of its contents ––– the cheapest well-made historical volume ever published. ANCIENT EGYPT UNDER THE PHARAOHS. By John Kenrick, M.A. Two volumes in one large 12mo, Long Primer type, 902 pages, with illustrations. Cloth, $1.00. This excellent work, some time out of print in this country, and costing $15 to import, is now published in a handsome edition, at a price within the reach of all. It deals with the history of Egypt from the earliest times to its absorption into the empire of Alexander ; and in a most comprehensive, thorough, and remarkably entertaining way treats of the arts, sciences, laws, language, religion, agriculture , navigation, and commerce of this most wonderful of the nations of the ancient world. As an authority no work upon Egypt ranks higher. HISTORY OF ENGLAND FROM THE INVASION of Julius Caesar to the Revolution of 1688. By David Hume. A new edition with the author's latest corrections and improvements, prefixed by a short account of his life, written by himself. With a fine steel portrait. In 6 vols., octavo 3472 pages. Pica type. Printed on fine, heavy paper. Extra cloth, gilt top, price, per set, $6.00. A cheaper edition , on lighter but excellent paper, bound in three vols., half Russia, red edges, $4.50. No handsomer edition of Hume's magnificent history has ever been published. I determined to show book buyers, booksellers, and publishers, all, by a grand example, that IT IS possible to make books of the highest excellence and yet sell them at low prices. "The immortal narrative of Hume. . . . Hume, whose simple but profound history will be coeval with the long and eventful thread of English story."––SIR ARCHIBALD ALISON. "His charming style, his prefound sagacity, and his philosophical reflections, clothe his great work with irresistible attractions."––CHANCELLOR KENT. Alden's Manifold Cyclopedia THIS will be recognized as the most important literary announcement I have ever made. All previous undertakings, successes and failures have been preparation for this. The Manifold Cyclopedia will be the most comprehensive single work of reference ever undertaken in the English language. It will include: An English Dictionary, based upon the new "Imperial Dictionary," recently published in England. The "Imperial" is very much larger than either Webster's or Worcester's Unabridged Dictionary; and, being many years more recent in its compilation, its editors had, of course, the benefit of all that scholarship had gained by either Webster or Worcester. It will be thoroughly revised and enlarged (rather than abridged) by its former chief editor. Six Other Languages. It will also include a concise dictionary of the six other principal literary languages of the world --GREEK, LATIN, FRENCH, GERMAN, ITALIAN, and SPANISH. A Cyclopedia. Its cyclopedia features will be based upon "Chambers's Encyclopedia," but will be very much more comprehensive, covering more thoroughly than any other single work heretofore published all departments of human knowledge usually comprehended in a Cyclopedia or Library of Universal Knowledge. Over 5000 Illustrations. It will be fully illustrated, including more than 5000 wood-cuts and reproductions, and such numerous maps as will constitute a complete atlas of the world, ancient and modern, sacred, and political. One Alphabet. The entire contents of THE MANIFOLD CYCLOPEDIA will be included in one alphabetical arrangement, thus giving the utmost facility for reference. Editors-in-Chief. The former Editor-in-Chief of "The Library of Universal Knowledge," Rev. RICHARD GLEASON GREENE, will have charge of the work, his principal Associate being JAMES HUNTER, formerly of Glasgow, Scotland, where for nearly ten years he was principal editor of the new "Imperial Dictionary," and more recently, in this country, Editor of the "Supplement to Worcester's Unabridged Dictionary." The scholarship and skill of these trained cyclopedists will be supplemented by other experienced workers from the former editorial staffs of "The Library of Universal Knowledge" and the Appleton's and Johnson's Cyclopedias, and by many others. Price. THE MANIFOLD CYCLOPEDIA will be published in convenient, double-column octavo volumes, of about 800 pages each, at the price of $1.25 per volume, cloth binding, and will probably be completed in twelve volumes. Specimen Pages, with more detailed prospectus, will be ready in a few days, and will be sent free upon application. The Elzevir Library. Always unabridged, and in large type, usually the type shown by these two lines. The following now ready, paper covers: 125 Confessions of an Opium-Eater ... 10c 124 Legend of the Wandering Jew ... 2c 123 Hermann and Dorothea. Goethe ... 6c 122 Public Health. Edward Orton, LL.D. ... 2c 121 Some of my Pets. Grace Greenwood ... 2c 120 The Raven, etc. By Edgar A. Poe ... 2c 119 Ethics of the Dust. By John Ruskin ... 10c 118 Crown of Wild Olive. By John Ruskin ... 10c 117 Sesame and Lilies. By John Ruskin ... 10c 116 Luther Anecdotes. By Dr. Macauley ... 8c 115 Luther’s Table-Talk. Dr. Macauley ... 5c 114 Life of George Muller. Mrs. Muller ...5c 113 The Understanding. John Locke ... 10c 112 The Battle of Waterloo. E. S. Creasy ... 2c 111 The Battle of Saratoga. E. S. Creasy ... 2c 110 Defeat of the Spanish Armada ... 2c 109 Battle of Hastings. E. S. Creasy. ... 3c 108 Tints of the Times. By O. C. Kerr. ...2c 107 Battle of the Books. Dean Swift ... 2c 106 The Heart of Bruce, etc. By Aytoun ... 2c 105 Virginia, Ivry, The Armada. Macauley. ... 2c 104 Count Rumford. By J. Tyndall ... 3c 103 The Battle of Marathon. E. S. Creasy ... 3c 102 The Ancient Mariner. S. T. Coleridge ...2c 101 Mazeppa. By Lord Byron ... 2c 100 James Ferguson, the Astronomer ... 3c 99 The Four Chief Apostles. F. Godet ... 3c 98 Jesus and Hillel. Dr. Franz Delitzsch ... 3c 89 Gertrude of Wyoming. Campbell ... 2c 88 Health for Women. Dr. Taylor ... 15c 84 Essay on Man. By Pope ... 3c 83 Flor d’Aliza. By Lamartine ... 15c 79 The Specter Bridegroom. Irving ... 2c 69 A Half Hour with St. Paul ... 3c 68 The Crucifixion. Cunningham Geikie. ... 2c 67 Seneca and St. Paul. Canon Farrar ... 2c 66 The Celtic Hermits. Chas. Kingsley ... 2c 64 The Essays of Lord Bacon. Complete ... 15c 63 Mud-King’s Daughter, etc. ... 10c 62 The Ugly Duck, and other Stories ... 10c 61 The Picture-Book without Pictures ... 10c 60 The Ice Maiden, and other Stories ... 10c 59 The Christmas Greeting ... 10c 58 Shoes of Fortune, and Other Stories. ... 10c 57 Fairy Tales. By Hans Andersen. Illus. ... 10c 56 The Story-Teller, and other Tales ... 10c 55 The Great Bridge ... 3c 53 Adventures of Baron Munchausen ... 2c 52 Sindbad the Sailor ... 2c 51 Fables from Aesop. Illustrated ... 3c 46 Philosophy of Style. Herbert Spencer ... 3c 44 Evidences of Evolution. Huxley ... 2c 43 Buddhism. By John Caird ... 2c 42 Civilizations of Asia. Geo. Rawlinson ... 2c 41 Life of Peter Cooper. C. E. Lester ... 10c 40 Sunshine, and Other Stories. E. T. Alden ... 3c 38 Life of Richard Wagner. Portrait ... 3c 37 Pearls of the Faith. Edwin Arnold ... 15c 36 Schiller’s Song of the Bell, etc. ... 2c 35. Life of Alexander H. Stephens. Illus. ... 10c 32 Indian Song of Songs. Edwin Arnold ... 6c 30 Highways of Literature. D. Pryde ... 10c 28 Songs of Seven, etc. Jean Ingelow ... 2c 27 How Lisa Loved the King. Geo. Eliot ... 2c 26 Cotter’s Saturday Night, etc. Burns ... 2c 25 The Deserted Village, etc. Goldsmith ... 2c 21 American Humorists — Mark Twain ... 2c 20 American Humorists — A. Ward ... 2c 19 American Humorists — Lowell ... 4c 18 Cricket of the Hearth. Dickens. Illus. ... 10c 17 American Humorists — Holmes ... 2c 16 Life of Gustavo Dore. Illustrated. ... 3c 15 American Humorists — Irving ... 2c 14 Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. Illus. ... 10c 13 A Half Hour in Natural History ... 3c 12 World Smashing, etc. Williams ... 2c 11 Life of Sir Isaac Newton. Jas. Parton. ... 2c 10 Queen Mabel, etc. Ellen Tracy Alden. ... 3c 9 Hamlet. Shakespeare ... 7c 8 Life of Frederick the Great. Macauley ...7c 7 Motive and Habit of Reading ... 2c 6 Enoch Arden. By Alfred Tennyson ... 2c 5 Sea-Serpents of Science. A. Wilson ... 2c 3 The Words of Washington ... 4c 2 The Burning of Rome. Canon Farrar ... 2c 1 Rip Van Winkle. Washington Irving ... 2c ANCIENT CLASSICS FOR ENGLISH READERS. The aim of this unique and scholarly series is to open to the unlearned English reader the beauties and treasures of classic lore, tell who the writers were, give some connected outline of their story, present their most striking passages in choice English translation, and illustrate them from the wealth of modern scholarship. 1 Caesar. By Anthony Trollope. 2 Herodotus. By Geo. C. Swayne. 3 Cicero. By W. L. Collins. 4 Demosthenes. By Rev. W. J. Brodribb. 5 Aristotle. By Sir Alex. Grant. 6 Plato. By C. W. Collins. 7 Horace. By Theodore Martin. 8 Juvenal. By Edward Walford. 9 Tacitus. By W. B. Donne. 10 Virgil. By W. L. Collins. 11 Homer : The Il ad. By W. L. Collins. 12 Homer : The Odyssey. By W. L. Collins. 13 Xenophon. By Sir Alex. Grant. 14 Aeschylus. By the Bishop of Colombo. 15 Sophocles. By C. W. Collins. 16 Pliny. By Church and Brodribb. 17 Aristophanes. By W. L. Collins. 18 The Greek Anthology. By Lord Neaves. 19 Euripides. By W. B. Donne. 20 Livy. By W. L. Collins. 21 Ovid. By Rev. A. Church. 22 Thucydides. By W. L. Collins. 23 Lucian. By W. L. Collins. 24 Plautus and Terence. By W. L. Collins. 25 Lucretius. By W. H. Mallock. 26 Pindar. By Rev. F. D. Morice. 27 Hesiod and Theognis. By Rev. J. Davis. The volumes contain a little less than 200 pages each, and are sold separately, in paper, at 12c.; cloth, 25c. They are also bound three volumes in one, arranged in the order above given. Price per volume, half Russia, red edges, 60c.; per set of 9 vols., $5.00. Works of Washington Irving. Two Excellent Editions. One of the most thoroughly satisfactory achievements of THE LITERARY REVOLUTION is the publication of the works of this most widely celebrated of American authors, in the editions now presented. The type used is shown by these lines: nothing so good in quality was ever before published at less than seven times the price now asked for the CAXTON EDITION. These volumes give Irving's complete works, except the Life of Washington, which will follow in uniform style when the copyright expires. The CAXTON EDITION, which is uniform in all respects with the Caxton Illustrated editions of Dickens, Thackeray, Waverly, etc, is very handsomely bound in extra cloth, with black and gold designs, the volumes being arranged as follows: NEW CAXTON EDITION. 1 Life of Christopher Columbus. 2 The Sketch Book. Crayon Papers. Knickerbocker's of New York. Tour of the Prairies. 3 Tales of the Traveller. Bracebridge Hall. Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey. Miscellanies. 4 Tales of the Alhambra. Conquest of Granada. Conquest of Spain. Spanish Voyages of Discovery. 5 Life of Oliver Goldsmith. Mahomet and His Successors. Moorish Chronicles. 6 Astoria. Adventures of Capt. Bonnveille. Salmagundi. Price per volume, sold separately........75 cents. " " set of 6 volumes.......................... $4.00. NEW LIBRARY EDITION. The NEW LIBRARY EDITION now for the first time presented, is printed from the same plates as the CAXTON, but on heavier paper, and consequently is bound in a greater number of volumes, which are more satisfactory in bulk. The style of the binding adopted is new and unique, the acme of neatness, simplicity, and utility; dark, silk-finished cloth, plain gilt title, and gilt tops. Volumes are as follows: 1 Life of Christopher Columbus. 2 The Sketch Book. Knickerbocker's New York. 3 Life of Oliver Goldsmith. Bracebridge Hall 4 Tales of the Alhambra. Conquest of Granada. 5 Mahomet and his Successors. Moorish Chronicles. 6 Crayon Papers. Conquest of Spain. Spanish Voyages of Discovery. 7 Astoria. Tour of the Prairies. 8 Adventures of Capt. Bonneville. Salmagundi. 9 Tales of a Traveller. Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey. Miscellanies. Price for the complete set.....................................$6.00 I have also a limited supply of the edition heretofore published, which I will close out at reduced prices, as follows: MODEL OCTAVO EDITION. Volume I contains: Life, by R.H. Stoddard The Sketch Book The Alhambra Conquest of Granada Conquest of Spain Tales of the Traveller Bracebridge Hall Knickerbocker's New York Spanish Voyages Salmagundi Wolfert's Roost Miscellanies Volume II contains: Life of Columbus Astoria Tour of the Prairies Abbotsford Newstead Abbey Mahomet and his Successors Life of Oliver Goldsmith Bonneville's Adventures Crayon Papers Moorish Chronicles Price per set: cloth, $2.90; half Russia, red edges, $3.50. I have a few extra copies of Volume II., model octavo, which I will sell separately (Vol. I. will not be sold separately), at the extra reduced and merely nominal price of $1.30 for the cloth, $1.50 for the half Russia. Pages 46 & 47. The Personal Poems of Francis Bacon. (Discovery of True and original order of the "Shake-spear Sonnets. (Gem edition) by Alfred Dodd, Daily Post PrintersLiverpool.2/6). THE ?UARTO DEDICATION. TO.THE.ON?IE.BEGETTER.OF THESE.INSUING.SONNETS. ??.W.H.ALL.HAPPINESSE. AND.THAT.ETER[?????]. PROMISED. BY. OUR.EVER-LIVING.POET. WISHETH. ??.WELL-WISHING. ADVENTURER.IN. SETTING. FORTH. T.T* "The full stop after each word in the published version indicated to the Elizabethan Reader that the words were to be transposed before the real meaning could understood." THE POET'S DEDICATION. THE ON??? BEGET??R OF MR.WILLIAM [???????] WISHETH A?? HA?PINESSE TO THE ADVENTURER IN SETTING FORTH THESE INSUING SONNETS AND THAT ?T?RNI?IE PROMISED BY OUR WELL-WISHING EVER-LIVING POET. Fra.Bacon. 'The above is the correct arrangement of the original dedication before the words were mixed by the Poet. *"T.T." are the symbols for the two fillars of Masonry: the two "T.T's" predicate an invisible T": Conjoined they give the correct numerical ?????????? Rosi?rosge Count of Fra.(Brother) Bacon. The "T.T's" are to be found between the feet of the Shakespeare Monument in Westminster Abbey. "This is printed as my Last Secret Book to the Craft". Lord St. Alban Worshipful Grandmaster (G.M) An Enfolded message in the Prologue Sonnet. Sonnet(150),LXXIV. last line "?????? enfolds the ????????? concluding phrase of the penal sign of the Third Degree.In view of the vow that every initiate takes, no Mason save the Founder and Father of English Masonry-one who was above the law-dare have written it. Lord Saint Alban. The Records of Grand Lodge state:"The First Grand Master(AND DEVISED -italics mine-Rosicrosse)A.D.287. Saint Alban.There was no martyred "Saint Alban" in Anno Domini 267. The number is the cypher count of Fra. Rosi Crosse....the Secret Elizabethan Society."A.D" does not refer to Date. There was no English Language in Anno Domini 287 and consequently no English Masonic Ritual nor English Lodge of Free and Accepted or Speculative Mason-as we know them to-day-in existence. There was no English language [??????????????????????????????????? until Francis Bacon and "Shake-speare" coined words for Englishmen to use. "A.D". stood the words "AND DEVISED" and was so used by the Recorders of Grand Lodge. Shaksper of Stratford was never a member of any London or Stratford Lodge. He was not "on the square". He could not possibly have write the [*over (6) Masonic Sonnets. No member of Grand Lodge to-day nor in those times] dare have written them. Only one man possessed the inherent right...the Founder: and Shakesper of Stratford wasnot the Founder any more than he was ever a Mason?." -alfred Dodd. ORDER FORM. To Daily Post Printers. Wood Street, Liverpool, Eng. Please send me, on publication, a copy of the enlarged Alfred Dodd edition of The Personal Poems of Francis Bacon, for which I promise to pay on delivery the sum of 10/6. Name..................................... Address................................ ................................................. ORDER FORM. To Daily Post Printers, Wood Street, Liverpool, England. Please send me, on publication, a copy of the enlarged Alfred Dodd edition of The Personal Poems of Francis Bacon, for which I promise to pay on delivery the sum of 10/6. Name.............................................. Address.......................................... The Personal Poems of Francis Bacon (Our Shake-speare) The Son of Queen Elizabeth. The Original Arrangement of the Sonnets. (His “Slight Muse”) Theme No. New No’s. I 1 - 41 41 Sonnets to his Mother, Queen Elizabeth. II 42- 71 30 “ “ “Sweetheart, Queen Margot of IX 119 - 140 France, Valois & Navarre. [crossed out] \ 22 “ “ King James. [crossed out] / 15 “ “ Pallas Athene, the goddess VIII 99 - 102 whose symbols, the [e: crossed out] Helmet of 106 - 118 Invisibility, and the Spear of Knowledge, in the War Against Ignorance, he employed. V888 888888 [8888888?]/ IV 75 - 87 13 “ “ Apollo, the god of Poetry and Eloquence. V 88 - 98 9 “ “ The Logos, The Great Folio. XII 147 152 6 “ “ Last Words to the Rosicrosse & Masonic Brotherhoods. VII 103- 107 5 “ “ “Shake-speare”, the Dramatist that Francis Bacon cannot openly praise. X 141 - 144 4 “ “ *”Aftermath” of (Framed) Fall from the Chancellorship”. *”Some falls are means the (403. happier to arise”. Cymb. IV ii III 72 - 74 3 “ “ His Fourteen year old Wife, Alice Barnham. (See Sonnet 73 XXI old “order” 11th line) VI 97 - 98 2 “ “ “L’Envoie” (the Dramatic Plays shall Stand against the scythe of Time For Ever. XI 145 - 146 2 “ “ His Daemon. XIII 153 - 154 2 “ “ The Great Seal. ——- 154 Total “ ———————————————- (2) I. FRom fairest Creatures we desire increase, That thereby Beauty’s Rose might never die, But as the riper should by time [?] decease, His Tender Heir might bear his memory; Francis Tudor Bacon. (Quattro Print.) (See page 44 note) The cult of [?apell] [?ctie??] and spiritual [????ish] were and [?????????} on the subject is absolute D[???] - Moron- ism is the Social & Edu- cational Expectancy still. Judy takes discu[??]g to break it up [*leading suffragists] October 28, 1913 Mr. J.D. Bacon, Sec. to Judge Lindsey Juvenile Court Denver, Colorado Dear Mr. Bacon: In answer to your letter of October 24, the addresses that I think you want are as follows. The Woman Voter & Newsletter, 48 East 34th St., New York The Suffragist 1420 F. St., N.W., Washington, D.C. The Women's Political World 13 West 42nd St., New York City Maryland Suffrage News Cliffhurst, Mt. Washington, Md. Everywoman Columbus, Ohio Life and Labor 127 No.Dearborn St., Chicago, Ill. The Forerunner 67 Wall Street, New York City Mrs. O.H.P. Belmont Political Equality Assn.,15 East 41st Street, New York Dr. Anna H. Shaw Moylan, Pennsylvania Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt 48 East 34th St., New York City There are so many other prominent suffragists that I hardly know whom to give you. Here are a few. Mrs. Catherine Waugh McCullough, Evanston, Illinois Mrs. Grace Wilbur Trout C/o Illinois Equal Suffrage Assn., Chicago, Illinois 938 Fine Arts Building Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton Warren, Ohio Mrs. Desha Breckinridge Lexington, Kentucky Mrs. Anne [*Annie] G. Porritt 63 Tremont St., Hartford, Conn. Miss Kate Gordon 1800 Prytania St., New Orleans, La. Miss Anne H. Martin Reno, Nevada Miss Flora Dunlap Roadside Settlement House, 7th & Scott Sts., Des Moines, Iowa Mrs. Henry M. Youmans Waukesha, Wisconsin Mrs. Draper Smith 634 Park Ave, Omaha. Nebraska Mrs. Maude C. Stockwell 3204 East 51st St., Minneapolis, Minn. Mrs. Jennie C. Law Hardy Tecumseh, Michigan Mrs. Frank M. Roessing 3044 Jenkins Arcade, Pittsburgh,Pa. Miss Bessie Pope 161 Summit Ave., Jersey City, N.J. These are, of course, only a few. I have given as nearly as possible those whom I think might be near the press work in each State. I hope this information will be of some aid to the Judge in his campaign. [*suffrage paper] Mr. J.D.B.--2 Mrs. J. G. McCarthy. Fulton. New York. has just written in asking for information about Judge Lindsey. Yours sincerely, HBS.SEH Transcribed and reviewed by contributors participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.