_Bacon and Shakespeare._
[Illustration: _Francis Bacon._
_From a miniature by Peter Oliver._
_belonging to His Grace the Duke of Buccleuch._]
_Bacon
and
Shakespeare._
BY
ALBERT F. CALVERT.
London:
DEAN & SON, LIMITED,
160A, FLEET STREET.
1902.
Taunton:
E. GOODMAN AND SON, PHŒNIX PRINTING WORKS.
_Preface._
_To anticipate for this little book that it may prove the means of
convincing a single Baconian of the error of his ways, would be to
express a hope that has only the faintest chance of realisation.
Baconianism is so wilful and so obstinate that it is not amenable to
any treatment that has yet been invented. It has its root in an entire
misconception of the character and temperament of the man Bacon; it
is nourished on the grossest misrepresentation of the man Shakespeare
that the memory of an author has ever been subjected to. So long as
the fallacy, backed up by specious argument, was confined to the
consideration of the mighty few, it was scarcely necessary to enter
into the lists with the Baconian champions, but the new and energetic
move which is now being made to cast down Shakespeare from the “topmost
pinnacle in the temple of fame,” and to set up the figure of Bacon in
his stead, has had the result of bringing the subject once more into
public view. In the circumstances, the publication of the following
summary of the evidence may be found not inopportune. It may not
effect a cure in the case of confirmed Baconians, but I have a modest
hope that it will enable the unprejudiced inquirer to be on his guard
against the hallucination. The Baconians have woven a cunning mesh of
fact and fable to entangle the mind of the unwary; the task I have
set myself is to review the premises, test the arguments, and combat
the conclusions upon which Bacon’s pretensions to the authorship of
Shakespeare’s plays is alleged to rest, and to explain the reasons that
we hold for ascribing the authorship of the Plays to Shakespeare._
_While the majority of Shakespearean students are impatient of
discussion, the disciples of the Baconian theory are prompt and eager
and voluminous in the propagation of their arguments. Indeed, they
have, all along, had the lion’s share in the controversy, and by their
much speaking, have stormed the ears of that section of the public
which neither thinks for itself, nor will be at the trouble to verify
what it is told. Bacon has been born again in the biographies of his
devotees, and Shakespeare, by the same agency, has been edited out of
recognition. Bacon’s brilliant intellectual qualities have been taken
as the basis of all argument, the human and temperamental side of his
character has been boldly made amenable to the exigencies of argument,
and his many glaringly reprehensible actions have been carefully
ignored. I have endeavoured, in the ensuing pages, not so much to give
a picture of the complete man, as to show what he was capable of in
the way of selfishness, trickery and subterfuge. He was capable of the
basest ingratitude and meanness, of the employment of barbarity when
it suited his purpose, of unctuous servility and boundless egoism. He
had neither the temperament nor the poetical ability nor the time to
write the Plays; had he the meanness of spirit to claim them as his
own? We shall see!_
_The conclusions I have formed with respect to the two cipher
revelations which are now agitating the minds of both Shakespeareans
and Baconians are derived partly from my estimate of the character
of Bacon, partly from the apparent sincerity of Mrs. Gallup, and
partly again from what I know of other and entirely independent
decipherations of further Bacon messages, which are now being actively
made in this country. Of Mrs. Gallup I only know that which her book
and her publishers reveal. Of Dr. Orville W. Owen, the discoverer of
the word-cipher I learn, from an American source, quoted by way of a
testimonial in one of the doctor’s books, that he is “a man who has
reached middle age,” and who has “never shown the slightest sign of
possessing unusual or extraordinary literary skill, or genius.” In
other words, his sponsors assure us that he is incapable of writing
those portions of Shakespeare which form so great a part of his
decipherations, or even the connecting passages which appear to have
been contributed by Bacon. We must accept this opinion as a tribute of
personal character._
_Concerning the illustrations, I may be allowed to say a few
explanatory words. The two photogravure reproductions are taken
respectively from a miniature by Peter Oliver, belonging to the Duke
of Buccleuch, and from a very rare print of Bacon. The print from
Vansomer’s painting, the picture of Bacon’s monument, and the portraits
of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Sir Nathaniel Bacon, the Earl of Essex and Queen
Elizabeth, and the views of Stratford-on-Avon and Gorhambury will, I
trust, be found of general interest. The facsimile pages from “Sylva
Sylvarum” and the “Novum Organum,” with their allegorical devises
and fine workmanship, illustrate the contrast between the manner in
which the works of Bacon and those of Shakespeare were given to the
world. The portraits of Shakespeare contained here are well known to
students. The reproduction of the bust will be familiar to all visitors
to Stratford, the “Droeshout” Engraving is the picture which forms
the frontispiece to the First Folio, and the original of the Chandos
portrait is now in the National Portrait Gallery._
_Albert F. Calvert._
_“Royston,” Eton Avenue,
London, N.W._
_List of Illustrations._
PAGE.
FRANCIS BACON, _from a Miniature by Oliver_ Frontispiece.
FRANCIS BACON (aged 18), _from a Miniature by Hilliard_ 4
FRANCIS BACON as Lord Chancellor (_Vansomer_) 12
FRANCIS BACON as Lord Chancellor 16
FRANCIS BACON’S Monument in St. Michael’s Church 20
SIR NICHOLAS BACON, _Portrait and Autographs_ 24
ANNA LADY BACON, Mother of Francis Bacon 32
SIR NATHANIEL BACON 36
ST. MICHAEL’S CHURCH 44
QUEEN ELIZABETH 48
ROBERT DEVEREUX, Earl of Essex 52
ROBERT DUDLEY, Earl of Leicester 56
FRONTISPIECE TO _Sylva Sylvarum_ 60
FRONTISPIECE TO _Novum Organum_ 68
GORHAMBURY, Three Views, 1568, 1795, 1821 72
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, _The Droeshout Etching_ 80
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, _The Chandos Portrait_ 84
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, The Bust at Stratford-on-Avon 96
SHAKESPEARE’S HOUSE 108
CHANCEL OF TRINITY CHURCH (_Stratford-on-Avon_) 112
SHAKESPEARE AUTOGRAPHS 116
ANN HATHAWAY’S COTTAGE AT SHOTTERY 120
DR. OWEN’S WHEEL FOR DECIPHERING 128
_Contents._
PAGE.
BACON, THE PRODUCT OF HIS AGE 1
BACON, THE FRIEND OF ESSEX AND CECIL 9
BACON, AS THE CREATURE OF BUCKINGHAM 18
BACON AND SHAKESPEARE CONTRASTED 25
BACONIAN FALLACIES RESPECTING SHAKESPEARE 29
MR. THEOBALD, A BACONIAN BY INTUITION 35
WAS SHAKESPEARE THE “UPSTART CROW?” 40
WM. SHAKESPEARE, MONEY LENDER AND POET 46
THE “TRUE SHAKESPEARE” 50
MR. THEOBALD’S PARALLELS AND MR. BAYLEY’S CONCLUSIONS 55
THE BI-LITERAL CIPHER 62
BACON’S “STERNE AND TRAGICLE HISTORY” 71
BACON, THE AUTHOR OF ALL ELIZABETHAN-JACOBEAN LITERATURE 78
BACON AND “DIVINE AIDE” 88
SHAKESPEARE AND BACON IN COLLABORATION 92
THE TRAGICAL HISTORIE OF OUR LATE BROTHER ROBERT, EARL OF ESSEX 99
BACON, THE POET 107
“DID SHAKESPEARE WRITE BACON?” 111
THE CASE FOR SHAKESPEARE 115
WERE SHAKESPEARE AND BACON ACQUAINTED? 124
IN CONCLUSION 129
BACON & SHAKESPEARE.
_Bacon, the Product of His Age._
It is impossible to sympathise with, or even to regard seriously, the
spirit in which a small, but growing section of the reading public
of America, and of this country, has plunged into the controversy
respecting the authorship of the so-called Shakespeare plays. The
fantastic doubt which compelled individual scholars to investigate a
theory of their own inventing, to lay, so to speak, the ghost they
had themselves raised, has inspired distrust in the minds that had no
beliefs, and generated scepticism in those where no faith was. The
search for the truth has degenerated into a wild-goose chase; the
seekers after some new thing have made the quest their own; ignorance
has plagiarised from prejudice; the “grand old Bacon-Shakespeare
controversy,” as Whistler said of Art, is upon the town--“to be chucked
under the chin by the passing gallant--to be enticed within the gates
of the householder--to be coaxed into company as a proof of culture
and refinement.” The difficulties that such a controversy present to
the tea-table oracles are both numerous, and exceeding obstinate. The
people who read Shakespeare form a pitiably insignificant proportion
of the community, but they are multitudinous compared with those who
have the remotest acquaintance with the works of Francis Bacon. Bacon
is known to some as Elizabeth’s little Lord Keeper, to others his
name recalls the fact that he was James the First’s Lord Chancellor,
but outside his _Essays_, and, perhaps, _The New Atlantis_, his great
philosophical dissertations, the pride and treasure which he so
carefully preserved in Latin, lest they should be lost in the decay of
modern languages, are a sealed book to all, except a few odd scholars
at the Universities. Bacon is an extinct volcano. The fact is not
creditable to the culture of the age, but it is incontrovertible.
It has, on this account, been found necessary for Baconians to describe
to their readers what manner of man this was whom they would perch
on Shakespeare’s pedestal, and they have accomplished their task in
the manner best calculated to lend plausibility to their theories.
Moreover, they have displayed a subtle appreciation of the magnitude
of their undertaking. The Shakespeare plays, in common with all great
works, reflect in some degree the personality of their creator. The
Baconian students cannot deny that there are many characteristics in
their candidate which only the most devout can reconcile with the
spirit of the plays. It, therefore, became further necessary to ring
the changes on their candidate; to employ the arguments of induction
and deduction as best suited the exigencies of the task. In creating
the idol of Bacon, much had to be read into the subject, and it would
seem that the simplest method by which they could advance the claims
of Bacon was by discrediting the claims of Shakespeare. In estimating
the character of Viscount St. Alban, we have the solid foundation of
fact for our guidance; the personal details of Shakespeare’s career may
be written upon a page of note paper. The original Baconians seized
upon these few details to distort them to their own ends, and their
followers have done their best to perpetuate the outrage.
In the scope of this volume it is not possible, nor is it necessary,
to attempt an intimate analysis of the characters of Bacon and
Shakespeare, but a resumé of the leading incidents in their lives, a
brief review for the purpose of making a comparison of their respective
temperaments, will not be out of place. In the following pages my
endeavour has been to arrange, as systematically as possible, the
reasons for my belief--for these I invite a courteous hearing; as for
the conclusions I have formed, I am content to abide by them.
My last desire in dealing with the career of Lord Bacon has been to
find reasons for supposing him to be the author of Shakespeare’s
plays. That endeavour has been made by his many champions with more
sanguinity than I could display, and I have carefully weighed every
argument and fact advanced in his favour. I have read, and re-read,
and argued against myself, the claims which have been put forward
with so much earnestness and evident conviction. But against these
I have had to set the bald facts that make the claim untenable. The
biographers of Bacon have been burdened with the ungrateful necessity
of finding excuses, and of making endless apologies for their hero.
Bacon’s greatest editor, the scholar who devoted some 30 years to the
work--who brought more knowledge, and disclosed more analytical acumen
and skilled judgment in his task than any editor ever brought to bear
upon the life and works of a single author--has stated his reasons
for his disbelief in the Baconian theory. When it is remembered that
Spedding’s knowledge of Shakespeare was “extensive and profound, and
his laborious and subtle criticism derived additional value from his
love of the stage,” his decision on the subject must be accepted, if
not as incontrovertible, at least, as the most damaging blow to the
Baconian theory we shall ever get.
A well-known writer, in declaring that a man’s morality has nothing to
do with his prose, perpetrated an aphorism which Baconians have adduced
to reconcile the psychological differences which we find between Bacon,
the man, and Bacon, the author of the plays traditionally attributed
to Shakespeare. The least erudite student of Shakespeare has felt the
magic of the dramatist’s boundless sympathy, his glowing imagination,
his gentleness, truth and simplicity. His mind, as Hazlitt recognised,
contained within itself the germs of all faculty and feeling, and
Mr. Sidney Lee, in his general estimate of Shakespeare’s genius, has
written, “In knowledge of human nature, in wealth of humour, in depth
of passion, in fertility of fancy, and in soundness of judgment, he
has not a rival.” Henry Chettle refers to “his uprightness of dealing
which argues his honesty,” the author of _The Return from Parnassus_
apostrophised him as “sweet Master Shakespeare,” and Ben Jonson, his
friend and fellow labourer, wrote of him, “I loved the man, and do
honour his memory, on this side idolatry as much as any. He was indeed
honest, and of an open and free nature.”
[Illustration: FRANCIS BACON.
AGED 18.
1578.
From a Miniature by Hilliard.]
An author’s morality, or rather his lack of it, may not detract from
the grace and clarity of his style, but it must inevitably leave its
mark in his matter. There is poetry that reveals only the brilliance
of the writer’s brain--if such can be termed poetry; there is prose
which lays bare the writer’s heart. In Shakespeare we have verse which
evidences the possession of both the mental and the temperamental
qualities in the highest perfection. There is Shakespeare the
genius, the artist, the creator, the master manipulator of theatrical
machinery. There is Shakespeare the man--the citizen of whom Jonson
wrote in terms of the warmest affection. In what degree do we find
these qualities which are inseparably associated with Shakespeare in
the character of Francis Bacon?
For every act of Bacon’s life we are met with apologies, explanations,
and extravagant defences. Lord Macaulay’s bitter and brilliant
analysis of the Lord Chancellor (a retaliatory treatise prompted by
the ingenuity and perversions of his enamoured champions), has been
robbed of its sting by the less brilliant, but more knowledgable and
judicious Spedding, who in his _Evenings with a Reviewer_, clearly and
dispassionately reduces Macaulay’s estimate to its correct biographical
and critical level. But there are acts in the life of Bacon that, shorn
of all the swaddling clothes of specious explanation, reveal the man in
a light which, in spite of valiant speculation and portentous argument,
in spite even of Bacon’s sworn word, render his claims to the mantle of
Shakespeare an absurdity--and an impertinence.
Francis Bacon, the youngest son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper
of the Great Seal, by his second wife (Ann, daughter of Sir Anthony
Coke), was born on 22nd January, 1561. He was the product of the age
in which he lived. A politician by heredity, a student by nature, a
courtier and place-seeker by force of circumstances, he fulfilled his
inevitable destiny. In a court in which the politics were based on the
teachings of Machiavelli, in which intrigue was a sport and a fine art,
where flattery and lying were necessities, and personal advancement the
one incentive to every act, Bacon intrigued, supplicated, flattered,
cringed, and lied himself into prominence. Nor must the future Lord
Chancellor be judged too harshly on that account. He was only gambling
with the current coin of his environment. By nature, he was averse
to Jesuitry, but he was forced by circumstances and his ambitions to
employ it. “What the art of oratory was in democratic Athens,” Dr.
Edwin A. Abbott writes, “that the art of lying and flattery was for
a courtier in the latter part of the Elizabethan monarchy.” In this
atmosphere of falseness and deception Bacon, with good credentials, a
fine intellect, little money, many influential acquaintances, but few
true friends, had to battle for his own fortunes. It is evident that
he early recognised the exigencies of the warfare. He absorbed and
assimilated the poison of his surroundings; he was both malleable and
inventive. His frame of mind is best illustrated by two of his maxims.
Truth, he declares is noble, and falsehood is base; yet “mixture of
falsehood is like alloy in the coin of gold and silver, which may
make the metal work the better.” Again, “The best composition and
temperament is to have openness in fame and opinion, secrecy in habit,
dissimulation in seasonable use, and a power to feign if there be no
remedy.”
In the Elizabethan Court, the man who desired preferment had to plead
for it. At the age of 16, Francis Bacon, after leaving Cambridge, had
been admitted as “an ancient” of Gray’s Inn, and in the following
year was sent to Paris in the suite of Sir Amias Paulet, the English
Ambassador. Two years later, on the death of his father, he returned to
England, to find himself destitute of the patrimony he had expected to
inherit, and forced to select the alternative of immediate work or the
accumulation of debts. In this emergency he applied to his uncle, Lord
Burghley, for advancement, and attempted to win the favour of the Queen
by addressing to her a treatise entitled, _Advice to Queen Elizabeth_.
This letter is remarkable for its lofty tone, its statesmanship, and
boldness, but it is marred by the appendix, in which the author states
that he is bold to entertain his opinions, “till I think that you think
otherwise.” This fatal pliancy, this note of excessive obsequiousness,
lasted him through life.
The want of success, which attended his first efforts to gain official
recognition, caused Bacon to decide, once and for all, upon his
choice of a career. His path lay either in the way of politics, which
meant preferment, power, and wealth; or science, philosophy, and the
development of the arts and inventions that tend to civilise the life
of man. No work seemed to him so meritorious as the latter, and for
this he considered himself best adapted. “Whereas, I believe myself
born for the service of mankind,” he declared, in 1603, in the preface
to _The Interpretation of Nature_; and in a letter to Lord Treasurer
Burghley, “I have taken all knowledge to be my province.” Again, “I
found in my own nature a special adaptation for the contemplation of
truth.... Imposture in every shape I utterly detested.” But, as he
proceeds to explain, “my birth, my rearing, and education,” pointed
not towards philosophy, but towards “politics;” love of truth and
detestation of imposture was in his heart, but “the power to feign if
there be no remedy” was there engraved also; the practical value of
the “mixture of falsehood” was in his blood. And the want of money
influenced him in forming his decision. In 1621, when his public career
came to its disgraceful close, he declared that his greatest sin had
been his desertion of philosophy and his having allowed himself to
be diverted into politics. “Besides my innumerable sins,” he cries
out in his confession to the “Searcher of Souls,” “I confess before
Thee that I am debtor to Thee for the gracious talent of Thy gifts
and graces, which I have neither put into a napkin, nor put it as
I ought to exchangers, where it might have made most profit; but
misspent it in things for which I was least fit, so that I may truly
say, my soul has been a stranger in the course of my pilgrimage.” At
the beginning of his history, Bacon pleads his birth, his rearing and
education as excuses for his choice of a career, and at its close,
in _De Augmentis_, he throws the blame on “destiny” for carrying
him into a political vortex. Dr. Abbott sums up his life-story in a
phrase--_multum incola_; with it his public career began and ended.
_Bacon, the Friend of Essex and Cecil._
Having failed to secure the goodwill of Burghley, Bacon addressed
himself to the Earl of Essex, and when, in 1593, Francis came under
the Queen’s displeasure, Essex pleaded for his re-instatement in the
Royal favour. Bacon himself practised every abasement, and, ever
failing, debased himself to what he himself described as an exquisite
disgrace. From this time until the day when there were “none so poor
to do him reverence,” the Earl of Essex was Bacon’s warm friend,
patron, and benefactor. He tided him over his monetary difficulties,
made him his counsellor, and among other gifts presented him with
a piece of land worth between £7,000 and £8,000. Bacon repaid his
friendship with advice, which, it may be presumed, was well meant. But
Bacon, the alleged author of the plays which portray an unrivalled
knowledge of human nature, betrayed a singular and unaccountable lack
of intuition into character. His counsel was, in a large measure, sound
and sagacious, but it was utterly spoiled by the trickiness which
breathes through every precept. If Bacon had possessed the knowledge of
men that we find in Shakespeare, he would have known that his maxims
were peculiarly unfit for Essex, who was the last man in the world to
carry into effect such a scheme of systematic dissimulation. Dr. Abbott
considers that few things did the Earl more harm than that the friend
in whom he placed most trust gave him advice that was rather cunning
than wise. Indeed, Essex was following the counsel of Bacon when he
offered himself, in 1599, for the command in Ireland. From this command
he returned to England a disgraced man, and his downfall culminated in
his death two years later. And in the hour of his humiliation and dire
need, when the Royal disfavour kept all his friends from him, Bacon’s
elder brother, Sir Anthony Bacon, and the author of the Sidney papers
regarded Bacon as one of the active enemies of his former patron.
Bacon’s biographers have strained every effort in explaining and
excusing his action in the ensuing trials. Not only have they failed to
exculpate him, but themselves must realise the futility of their most
ingenious endeavours to clear his character of this foul blot. Abbott,
his impartial biographer, says: “We may acquit him of everything but
a cold-blooded indifference to his friend’s interest and a supreme
desire to pose (even at a friend’s cost) as a loyal and much-persecuted
servant of the Queen.” But, truly, the most that can be said in
extenuation of his behaviour, is little indeed, when the friend is a
man to whom he had written, “I do think myself more beholding to you
than to any man.”
What, however, are the facts? When the first proceedings were taken
against Essex in the Star Chamber, Bacon absented himself from the
Court, his excuse to the Queen being, he said, “Some indisposition of
body.” His actual letter to Elizabeth explains that his absence was
compelled by threats of violence on the part of the Earl’s followers,
whom he openly charges with a purpose to take the Queen’s life. “My
life has been threatened, and my name libelled. But these are the
practices of those ... that would put out all your Majesty’s lights,
and fall on reckoning how many years you have reigned.” Abbott
considers that we need not accuse Bacon of deliberately intending by
these words to poison the Queen’s mind against his former friend, while
Professor Gardiner adduces this imputation as a proof that Bacon was
liable to “occasional ill-temper.” Contemporary judgment did not so
interpret the wording of the excuse. The treacherous nature of the
insinuation provoked a feeling of amazement and anger. That his brother
Anthony believed Bacon to be capable of so great vileness is evident,
and even Lord Cecil, the Earl’s greatest enemy, wrote to Francis
begging him to be, as he himself was, “merely passive, and not active,”
in insuring the fallen Favourite’s utter ruin.
In the face of these warnings and remonstrances, Bacon wrote to the
Queen expressing his desire to serve her in the second stage of the
proceedings against Essex. He asked that an important rôle might be
assigned to him, but although he was only entrusted with a subsidiary
part, he performed his task so adroitly as to earn the deep resentment
of the friends of Essex. Within a fortnight of the Earl’s liberation
Bacon again offered his services to Essex, who accepted them!
What followed? Bacon devised a plan to secure the Earl’s re-instatement
in the Royal favour. The artifice employed was to bring before the
notice of Elizabeth, a correspondence--ostensibly between Essex and
his brother Anthony--exhibiting the loyalty and love of the former
for the Queen. The letters were composed by Bacon, and while they
are interesting as specimens of the author’s literary power, and are
illustrative of his “chameleonlike instinct of adapting his style
to his atmosphere,” they were calculated, by the interpolation of
artful passages, to advance the interests of Bacon, rather than those
of Essex, with the Queen. It is significant also that the demeanour
which Bacon in these letters caused the Earl to assume, he used against
him when Essex was subsequently arraigned for treason. Unless we are
prepared to accept the statements of Bacon in this connection, it is
impossible to view his participation in this second trial without a
feeling of the deepest abhorrence. Bacon had no right to be in Court at
all. As one of the “learned counsel,” his presence was not required,
but in the capacity of “friend of the accused,” his evidence could
not fail to be greatly damaging to the Earl’s case. He proffered his
evidence, not only with readiness, but with a ferocious efficacy. We
have no evidence beyond Bacon’s own word--the word of a man who was
striving to put the best complexion on a foul act of treachery--that
he deprecated the task. “Skilfully confusing together” the original
proposal, and the abortive execution of Essex’s outbreak, he insisted
that the rising, which in truth was a sudden after-thought, was
the result of three months’ deliberation, and he concentrated all
his efforts on proving that Essex was “not only a traitor, but a
hypocritical traitor.” No other piece of evidence adduced at the trial
had greater weight in procuring the verdict against the Earl. Bacon
subsequently pleaded in extenuation of his behaviour that he was acting
under pressure from the Crown, but we have the knowledge that on the
first occasion he had offered his services, and we can only conclude
that at the price of sacrificing the friend who had loaded him with
kindnesses, he had determined to make this trial a stepping-stone to
Royal favour. To serve this end, friendship, honour, obligation were
brushed aside; for, as Bacon has said in one of his essays, the man who
wishes to succeed “must know all the conditions of the serpent.” The
price Bacon received for the blood of Essex was £1,200, or £6,000 in
our currency. “The Queen,” he wrote to a friendly creditor, “hath done
somewhat for me, though not in the perfection I hoped.” Bacon had, it
is fair to infer from this remark, betrayed his friend; had, in fact,
delivered him to the headsman for the hope of pecuniary reward.
[Illustration: Fr. verulam Cano
_Vansomer._]
In what degree Bacon was responsible for the drawing up of a
_Declaration of the Treasons of Essex_, which Lord Clarendon described
as a “pestilent libel,” is impossible to decide. He tells us that his
task was little more than that of an amanuensis to the Council and the
Queen, but this excuse fails him in the case of his _Apology_, put
forth as a vindication of the author in the estimation of the nobles,
from the charge of having been false to the Earl of Essex. The paper
is admittedly full of inaccuracies, conveying to us the picture,
“not of his actual conduct, but of what he felt his conduct ought to
have been.” Dr. Abbott dismisses this literary and historical effort
as interesting only as a “psychological history of the manifold and
labyrinthine self-deception to which great men have been subjected.”
On the accession of James I., Bacon again threw himself into the
political arena, determined to neglect no chance of ingratiating
himself with the new Sovereign. He poured forth letters to any and
everybody who had the power to forward his cause. He dwelt in these
epistles upon the services of his brother Anthony, who had carried on
secret and intimate negotiations with Scotland. Sir Thomas Challoner,
the confirmed friend of Essex, received a letter from him; he appealed
to the Earl of Northumberland; and became the “humble and much devoted”
servant of Lord Southampton, on the eve of that nobleman’s release
from the Tower (where Bacon had helped to place him as an accomplice
of Essex). To each he turned with the same request that they would
bury the axe, and “further his Majesty’s good conceit and inclination
towards me.”
At this time, Bacon, desperately apprehensive of rebuff, was anxious
to conciliate all parties, and to secure friends at Court. He was
willing, nay, eager, to be Greek, Roman, or Hebrew, in order to attain
his object--even he would avow a gift of poesy to make his calling
and election sure. Writing to Sir John Davies, the poet, Bacon, the
politician and philosopher, who did not publish two lines of rhyme
until twenty-one years later, desired him to “be good to concealed
poets.” Reading this statement in connection with the other epistles
he indicted at the same crisis, we realise how little dependence can
be placed upon the implied confession that he had written anonymous
poetry. His letters to Southampton, to Michael Hickes (Cecil’s
confidential man), to David Foules and Sir Thomas Challoner, and to
the King himself, all betray the same feverish desire to be all things
to all men. He assured Hickes that Lord Cecil is “the person in the
State” whom he “loves most,” and at the same moment he placed his whole
services at the disposal of Cecil’s rival, the Earl of Northumberland!
When the star of Northumberland began to pale, Bacon importuned Cecil
to procure him a knighthood to gratify the ambition of an “Alderman’s
daughter, a handsome maiden,” whom he had found “to my liking.” But for
a while Bacon found the struggle for recognition unavailing. The King
found him an acquired taste--or rather a taste that his Majesty had
yet to acquire--and after grovelling to all and sundry, he desisted at
the moment from the attempt to gain the King’s grace, “because he had
completely failed, and for no other reason.”
But although Bacon went into retirement, he divided his leisure
between his literary labours and his quest for political advancement.
In all his political pamphlets, his one ambition was to divine and
reflect the Royal views. In 1590 he had nothing but condemnation for
the Nonconformist party; in 1604 he had strenuously pleaded the cause
of Nonconformity; in 1616 he as strenuously opposed the slightest
concession being made to the Nonconformers. In 1604 he was returned
to Parliament; three years later, his zeal in anticipating the King’s
wishes, and supporting his proposals, was rewarded by his appointment
to the Solicitor-Generalship. In the following year he was made
clerk of the Star Chamber, and immediately set himself to secure the
displacement of Hobart, the Attorney-General.
Bacon’s conduct towards the Earl of Essex has already been considered.
Had this been the only instance of the kind in his career, his
apologists would have achieved something more than public opinion can
grant them in their endeavours to explain it away. But his behaviour
towards Cecil is another lurid illustration of his duplicity and
ingratitude. During the last fourteen years of his life Cecil had
been the friend and patron of Bacon, whose letters to him are couched
in almost passionate terms of loyalty and “entire devotion.” In one
epistle he declares himself “empty of matter,” but “out of the fulness
of my love,” he writes to express “my continual and incessant love for
you, thirsting for your return.” Cecil was his refuge and deliverer in
1598, and again in 1603, when he was arrested for debt, and Bacon was
not empty of reason when he asserted in another letter, “I write to
myself in regard to my love to you, you being as near to me in heart’s
blood as in blood of descent.” In 1611, a short while before Cecil’s
death, he wrote this last profession of his affection:--
“I do protest before God, without compliment, that if I knew in what
course of life to do you best service, I would take it, and make my
thoughts, which now fly to many pieces, be reduced to that centre.”
In May of 1612 Cecil died. Within a week Bacon had proffered his
services to the King in the place of his cousin, of whom he wrote:--
“He (Cecil) was a fit man to keep things from growing worse, but no
very fit man to reduce things to be much better; for he loved to keep
the eyes of all Israel a little too much upon himself.”
To another, he wrote that Cecil “had a good method, if his means had
been upright,” and again to the King, on the same subject:--
“To have your wants, and necessities in particular, as it were hanged
up in two tablets before the eyes of your Lords and Commons, to be
talked of for four months together; to stir a number of projects and
then blast them, and leave your Majesty nothing but the scandal of
them; to pretend even carriage between your Majesty’s rights and the
ease of the people, and to satisfy neither--these courses, and others
the like, I hope, are gone with the deviser of them.”
Less than a year before, Bacon had protested before God, “without
compliment,” his desire to serve Cecil, and now he protests to God
in this letter to the King, that when he noted “your zeal to deliver
the Majesty of God from the vain and indign comprehension of heresy
and degenerate philosophy ... _perculsit ilico animum_ that God would
shortly set upon you some visible favour; and let me not live if I
thought not of the taking away of that man”--the man as “near to me in
heart’s blood as in the blood of descent.”
[Illustration: _The Right Honble Francis Bacon, Baron Verulam and
Viscount St Albans, Lord High Chancellor of England._]
The King, who had grown weary of Cecil, may have accepted his death
as a visible favour of God, but the favour did not evidently embrace
the substitution of Bacon in his cousin’s stead. His application for
the vacant post of Lord Treasurer was passed over by the King, but
Bacon became Attorney-General in the following year.
_Bacon as the Creature of Buckingham._
Let us regard another trait in the character of this many-sided
statesman. To relieve the King’s pressing necessities it was proposed
that voluntary contributions should be made by the well-affected. The
contributions, commonly known as Benevolences, were rarely voluntary;
the “moral pressure” that was employed in their collection made them
in reality extortions, and, as such, they were the cause of national
dissatisfaction. During the search of the house of a clergyman named
Peacham, consequent on some ecclesiastical charge, a sermon was found
predicting an uprising of the people against this oppressive tax, and
foretelling that the King might die like Ananias or Nabal. The sermon
had neither been issued nor uttered, but the unfortunate rector, a very
old man, was indicted for conspiracy and, in contravention of the law,
put to the torture. Peacham had not been convicted of treason, though
Bacon “hopes that the end will be good;” or, in other words, that he
will be able to wring from the condemned man a confession to make good
the charge.
The wretched old clergyman, after being examined in Bacon’s presence,
“before torture, in torture, between torture, and after torture,” could
not be made to convict himself, and Bacon’s comment to the King is
that the man’s “raging devil seemeth to be turned into a dumb devil.”
It will be noted that this infamous act of illegality and Bacon’s
commentary are the deed and words of the man who is supposed by some to
have declared,
“The quality of mercy is not strain’d;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath; it is twice bless’d;
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes;
’Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown.”
We have seen Bacon as the ingrate, and Bacon as the brute; let us
observe him “the meanest of mankind,” as Pope described him--who, as
Abbott admits, although he refuses Pope’s description, “on sufficient
occasion could creep like a very serpent.” The sufficient occasion
was the sudden advance into fame of George Villiers, afterwards Duke
of Buckingham. The disgrace and imprisonment of Robert Carr, Earl of
Somerset, whose conviction Bacon laboured so strenuously to accomplish,
doubtless inspired the Attorney-General with the hope of becoming the
chief adviser of the Sovereign. Great must have been his mortification
when he discovered the impregnability of Villiers in the favour of
the King. But although cast down, Bacon was not abashed. He had, on a
previous occasion of disappointment, declared that “service must creep
where it cannot go” (_i.e._, walk upright), and he at once determined
to creep into the King’s confidence through the medium of the rising
Favourite. Instantly, Bacon was on his knees to the new star. “I am
yours,” he wrote, with more servile want of restraint than he had
disclosed in his letters to Essex or Cecil, “surer to you than to my
own life.” In speech and behaviour he lived up to his protest. He
beslavered Villiers with flattery to his face, and he carolled his
praises to those whom he felt assured would repeat his words to the
spoiled Favourite. His reward was not long in the coming. In 1617
he was made Lord Keeper. He took his seat in Chancery with the most
extravagant pomp, his retinue exceeding all his predecessors, says
a correspondent of Carleton, “in the bravery and multitude of his
servants.” The following day he wrote of the ceremony to Villiers,
“There was much ado, and a great deal of the world. But this matter
of pomp, which is heaven to some men, is hell to me, or purgatory at
least.” This expression, if not an affectation entirely, is, at least,
strangely inconsistent with the account of the vulgar pomp and display
of a _Feast of the Family_, which is described by Bacon with so much
detail in _The New Atlantis_.
[Illustration: THE MONUMENT OF LORD BACON IN St. MICHAEL’S CHURCH.]
In this year Bacon dared to interpose, for a fitful instant, between
Villiers and his desires; the next moment he is reduced to a state
of pathetic contrition. But the evanescent display of a spirit of
independence nearly cost the Lord Keeper his position at Court. For
purely personal reasons Bacon regarded, with aversion, the projected
marriage between Sir John Villiers, a brother of Buckingham, and
the daughter of his old rival and enemy, Sir Edward Coke. In a
letter to the Earl of Buckingham he so far forgot himself and his
repeated promises to hold himself as a mere instrument in the hands
of the King, as to protest against the proposed marriage. Realising
immediately the folly of this want of tact, he wrote to the King,
and to Buckingham, justifying, or rather excusing his temerity. The
King replied with a sharp rebuke, the Favourite in a short, angry
note. Further letters elicited additional curt corrections from the
angered Monarch, and from Buckingham. Bacon then, for the first time,
realised the enormity of his presumption. His position was in danger.
Excuse and justification were unavailing to conciliate his angry
masters; absolute submission was the only way out of his predicament.
Bacon submitted; he even offered to put his submission into writing
to the Favourite. Buckingham, in a pencilled note, couched in tones
in which arrogance is mixed with acrimonious reflection on “his
confused and childish” presumption, notified his forgiveness. In reply,
Bacon protested his gratitude to “my ever best Lord, now better than
yourself,” and concluded, “it is the line of my life, and not the lines
of my letter, that must express my thankfulness; wherein, if I fail,
then God fail me, and make me as miserable, as I think myself at this
time happy, by this reviver through his Majesty’s clemency and your
incomparable love and favour.”
His submission nullified his early resolve not to tolerate any attempts
to interfere with the course of law, and delivered him bodily into the
hands of Buckingham. The Favourite took the Lord Keeper at his word,
and although he put his loyalty to constant and severe tests, by making
frequent application to him in favour of chancery suitors, Bacon never
again forgot that “the lines of his life” must progress in undeviating
conformity with the Favourite’s will. It is not profitable here to
attempt to determine whether or not he gave verdicts against his own
judgment, but we have the letters to show that he listened, replied,
and complied with Buckingham’s requests, and in 1618 he was made Lord
Chancellor, doubtless by the influence, and on the advice, of the
Favourite.
During the period of Bacon’s temporary disgrace, “when the King and
Buckingham had set their faces against him, and all the courtiers
were yelping at his heels,” the only friend who remained staunch
and constant to him was Sir Henry Yelverton, the Attorney-General.
Yelverton, whose admiration for, and loyalty towards the Lord
Chancellor were unswerving, would truckle neither to the Favourite
nor to the King; although the former had assured him that those
who opposed him “should discern what favour he had by the power he
would use.” Within a year of Bacon’s restoration to favour Yelverton
came into collision with Buckingham, and the Attorney’s accidental
misconstruction of the King’s verbal instructions, served as an excuse
for an information to be laid against him in the Star Chamber. We have
seen how Bacon could repay friendship with ingratitude, and kindness
with baseness in the case of Essex and of Cecil, but, in the instance
of Yelverton, even his admirers are forced to admit that his behaviour
was “peculiarly cold-blooded and ungrateful.” But the “lines of his
life” had made him the serf of the Favourite, and “whatever other
resolutions Bacon may have broken, none can accuse him of breaking
this.” When the case came on, and when “the bill was opened by the
King’s Sergeant briefly, with tears in his eyes, and Mr. Attorney,
standing at the Bar, amid the ordinary Counsellors, with dejected
looks, weeping tears, and a brief, eloquent, and humble oration, made a
submission, acknowledging his error, but denying the corruption”--the
Lord Chancellor did his utmost to resist the merciful proposal of the
majority to submit the Attorney’s submission to the King. The King
declined to interfere, and the termination of the case was announced to
Buckingham by Bacon, in the following self-satisfied and congratulatory
note:--“Yesterday we made an end of Sir Henry Yelverton’s causes. I
have almost killed myself with sitting almost eight hours. But I was
resolved to sit it through.” He then gives the terms of the sentence,
and adds: “How I stirred the Court I leave it to others to speak; but
things passed to his Majesty’s great honour.” In other words, a blunt,
straightforward, and honourable man, who had refused to purchase his
office by bribes, or by flattery, had been condemned, on a charge of
corruption (of which his judges knew him to be guiltless), to a fine
of £4,000 and imprisonment during the King’s pleasure, for the offence
of refusing to cringe to Buckingham. These were the things that, in
Bacon’s judgment, “passed to his Majesty’s great honour.”
In 1618 Bacon became Baron Verulam of Verulam; three years later he
was created Viscount St. Alban, “with all the ceremonies of robes and
coronet.” But his disgrace and discomfiture were soon to come. “In a
few weeks,” writes Lord Macaulay, “was signally brought to the test the
value of those objects for which Bacon had sullied his integrity, had
resigned his independence, had violated the most sacred obligations of
friendship and gratitude, had flattered the worthless, had persecuted
the innocent, had tampered with judges, had tortured prisoners, had
plundered suitors, had wasted on paltry intrigue all the powers of the
most exquisitely constructed intellect that has ever been bestowed
on any of the children of men.” On March the 14th, 1621, Bacon was
charged by a disappointed suitor with taking money for the dispatch
of his suit. On April the 30th, in the House of Lords, was read “the
confession and humble submission of me, the Lord Chancellor.” On
May the 3rd, the Lords came to a general conclusion that “the Lord
Chancellor is guilty of the matters wherewith he is charged,” and it
was resolved that he should be fined £40,000, imprisoned in the Tower
during the King’s pleasure, declared incapable of any office, place,
or employment in the State or Commonwealth, and that he should never
sit in Parliament, nor come within the verge of the Court. Five years
later, on April the 9th, 1626, he died at Highgate of a chill and
sudden sickness, contracted by exposure when stuffing a fowl with snow
to test the effect of snow in preserving flesh from putrefaction. He
wrote, on his death bed, to Lord Arundel, to whose house he had been
carried: “As for the experiment it succeeded exceeding well.”
[Illustration: SIR NICHOLAS BACON.
From the original of Zucchero, in the collection of His Grace the Duke
of Bedford.]
[Illustration]
_Bacon and Shakespeare Contrasted._
The argument of the Baconians--the term is uniformly employed here
to mean the supporters of the Baconian theory of the authorship
of Shakespeare--is based on the honest belief that the varied
qualifications necessary for the production of the Plays were possessed
by only one man of the period in which they were written. And having
resolutely determined that the man could be no other than Francis
Bacon, they set themselves to work with the same resoluteness, to
bend, twist, and contort all facts and evidence to suit their theory.
It is clearly impossible to credit any of Shakespeare’s contemporary
dramatists with the authorship, because their acknowledged work is so
immeasurably inferior to his, that any such suggestion must appear
ridiculous. It is safe to assume that no writer who had produced poems
or plays inferior to those of Shakespeare could be attributed with
the authorship of these plays--Shakespeare can only be compared with
himself. And the only author who cannot be compared, in this way, to
his instant discomfiture, is Bacon, whose published work is, in form
and style and essence utterly dissimilar from that of Shakespeare.
If a brilliant intellect, wide knowledge, and classical attainments
were the only requisite qualifications for the production of the
greatest poetry of the world, then Bacon’s claim would stand on a sure
foundation. He was intimately acquainted, no man better, with the
philosophy of the law; he was an eminent classical scholar, a writer of
beautiful English, compact in expression, and rich in fancy. He had an
extensive acquaintance with literature and history, he was a brilliant
orator; but unto all these great gifts was not added the gentle nature,
the broad sympathy and knowledge of humanity, the wealth of humour, the
depth of passion, the creative power of poetry, which is so strikingly
manifested in the plays of William Shakespeare.