Here, as Professor Dowden admits, “the parallel is remarkably close,” but in order to show the “common knowledge of the time,” which is to account for it, he cites Holland’s Pliny to the effect that trees “have a certain moisture in their barkes which we must understand to be their very blood,” and he further refers to Pliny (XVII. 24), to the effect that a fir or pine tree must not have its bark “pulled” during certain months, and adds that, “like Shakespeare, Pliny terms the bark the ‘skin’ of the tree.” Once more, it is remarkable that the reference should be to Pliny, an author with whom, as we know, Bacon was on very familiar terms.[89] However, there is a further illustration from Dekker, and a quotation as to “proudly-stirring” sap from Gervase Markham.
Here again, the only question, as it seems to me, is whether this “remarkably close parallelism,” considered as one among many, is satisfactorily explained by the fact that other contemporary writers spoke of wounding the bark of trees, and drawing blood. It would, certainly, be more satisfactory, from a Baconian point of view, if we could find in both Bacon and Shakespeare something which could only have been known to those two writers, or to that one writer. But as that is hardly possible we have to consider all the parallel passages together, and ask ourselves whether or not, taken as a whole, they raise the presumption of identity of authorship.
Judge Webb, while denying the allegation that “all that is proper to Shakespeare and to Bacon was the common knowledge or common error of the time,” writes as follows: “Whatever inferences may be deduced from the fact, it surely is a fact that the poet, like the philosopher, maintained the theory of pneumaticals, the theory of the transformation of species, the theory that the sun is the efficient cause of storms, the theory that flame is a fixed body, the theory that the stars are fires, and the theory that the heavens revolve around the earth. That the poet should have been as interested as the philosopher in scientific matters is surely a fact worth noting; and even if they resorted to the store of ‘the common knowledge or common error of the time,’ it surely is remarkable that they not only resorted to the same storehouse, but selected the same things, and incorporated the same things in their respective writings, and, so far as either their knowledge or their errors in matters of science were concerned, were in reality the same.”
And here, since I profess not to be compiling a new “brief for the plaintiff” in the great case of Bacon v. Shakespeare, I am content to leave this interesting controversy for further consideration.
THE NORTHUMBERLAND MANUSCRIPT
In the year 1867 there was discovered at old Northumberland House in the Strand, in a box which had been for many years unopened, an Elizabethan manuscript volume containing, amongst other things, the transcripts of certain compositions admittedly the work of Francis Bacon. It commences with four speeches written by Bacon in 1592 for Essex’s Device, viz.: “The praise of the worthiest virtue”; “The praise of the worthiest affection”; “The praise of the worthiest power”; “The praise of the worthiest person.” These speeches were published in 1870 by Mr. James Spedding, with an introductory notice of the manuscript, and a facsimile of its much bescribbled outside page, or cover, of which more anon. The speech in praise of knowledge professes to have been spoken in “A conference of Pleasure,” and Mr. Spedding adopted this as the title of his little work. The manuscript book is thus described by him: “It is a folio volume of twenty-two sheets which have been laid one upon the other, folded double (as in an ordinary quire of paper) and fastened by a stitch through the centre. But as the pages are not numbered and the fastening is gone, it may once have contained more, and if we may judge by what is still legible on the much bescribbled outside leaf which once served for a table of contents, there is some reason to suspect that it did.” In a note he adds: “One leaf, however—that which would have been the tenth—is missing; and one, which is the fourth, appears to have been glued or pasted in.” It is clear that he included this missing “tenth” leaf in his “twenty-two sheets.”
Mr. Spedding, therefore, carefully examined the volume in the condition in which it was when found at Northumberland House, and, as his accuracy is well known, we may be content to rely upon his evidence in this matter. At any rate it is the best that we can now get, for as Mr. Frank Burgoyne, the Librarian of the Lambeth Public Libraries (who in 1904 edited and published a transcript and colotype facsimile of the whole of the contents of the volume) informs us: “Since Mr. Spedding wrote, the manuscript has been taken to pieces and each leaf carefully inlaid in stout paper, and these have been bound up with a large paper copy of his pamphlet entitled ‘A conference of Pleasure.’ The manuscript in its present condition contains 45 leaves, so Mr. Spedding does not appear to have included the outside page in his enumeration. The pages are not numbered, and there are no traces of stitching, or sewing; it is therefore quite impossible even to conjecture what was the number of sheets in the original volume.”[90]]