as attaché of the British Embassy, had spent three years in the early part of his life. To him we are doubtless indebted for these little amenities of speech.*

6. Other internal evidences also point unmistakably to Bacon's pen. Peculiarities of thought, style, and diction are more important in a contested case of authorship than the name on the title-page, for there we find the author's own signature in the very fibre of his work. We have only to hold the Plays, as it were, up to the light, to see the water-mark imprinted in them. To elucidate this point, we venture to spring upon our readers the deadly parallel :

* One or two specimens have been found in earlier literature, but the statement in the text is substantially correct. These salutations did not take root in English speech till they were implanted there by the author of the Plays.

R. M. Theobald, Esq., Secretary of the Bacon Society of London, sends us the following very pertinent suggestion on this subject: "The real significance of the Promus consists in the enormous proportion of notes which Bacon could not possibly have used in his acknowledged writings; the colloquialisms, dramatic repartees, turns of expression, proverbs, etc. Any biographer of Bacon, whatever his notions as to the Shakespearean authorship, may be reasonably expected to offer some explanation of this queer assortment of oddments, and to find out, if possible, what use Bacon made of them; and then our case becomes urgent."

* In this instance, as in many others, it requires Bacon's prose to explain Shakespeare's poetry.

FROM SHAKESPEARE.

FROM BACON.

39

The foregoing list might be extended almost indefinitely, but enough is given to show that on these two minds (if there were two) fell the light of intelligence, in repeated flashes, at the same exact angle. The cumulative force of these examples, taken in connection with the solid prejudice against which, in some instances, they break in vain, reminds us of the charge of the Old Guard at Waterloo, the "irresistible meeting the immovable."

7. Bacon's love of flowers perfumed his whole life. lt

*The Natural History was not printed till eleven years after Shakespeare's death. It is clear, then, that Shakespeare did not take the story from Bacon. It is almost equally clear that Bacon did not take it from Shakespeare, for he adds a particular which is not in the play, viz.: "The soothsayer was thought to be suborned by Cleopatra to make Antony live in Egypt and other places remote from Rome."

was to him, as he said, "the purest of human pleasures." Of the thirty-five species of garden plants mentioned in the Plays, he enumerates thirty-two in his prose works, bending over them, as it were, lovingly and, like the dramatist, noting the seasons in which they bloom. In both authors, taste and knowledge go hand in hand.

This point will bear elaboration, for the two methods of treatment seem to be mutually related, like the foliage of a plant and the exquisite blossom. Bacon says: "I do hold it, in the royal ordering of gardens, there ought to be gardens for all the months of the year, in which severally things of beauty may be then in season;" and with this end in view, he proceeds to classify plants according to their periods of blooming.

Shakespeare, on his part, introduces to us a beautiful shepherdess distributing flowers among her friends; to the young, the flowers of spring; to the middle-aged, those of summer; while the flowers that bloom on the edge of winter are given to the old. What is still more remarkable, however, the groupings in both are substantially the One commentator has even proved the correctness of a disputed reading in the play by reference to the corresponding passage in Bacon.

same.

We present the two lists, side by side, for comparison, as follows: