Baconian Essays

by active 19th century E. W. Smithson

But these are not the only Shakespearean references which we find on this remarkable page. About the centre occurs the word “honorificabiletudine,” a reminiscence of the “honorificicabilitudinitatibus” of Love’s Labour’s Lost. And lower down in the left-hand column we have,

revealing
day through
every Crany
peepes and ...
see
Shak

which seems to be an imperfect reminiscence of the line in Lucrece, “revealing day through every cranny spies,”[97] and is a very interesting contemporary notice of the poem which was first published in 1594 with the name “William Shakespeare” subscribed to the dedication addressed to the Earl of Southampton.

Here, then we have the names and the works of Shakespeare and Bacon brought into curiously close juxtaposition in (as it will presently be seen) a contemporary document. Here are speeches and Essays written by Bacon, and Plays by “William Shakespeare,” put together in the same volume (pace Mr. Dowse), and we find some penman with these two names so much in his mind that he writes them both, either fully or in abbreviated form, many times over on the outside sheet of the paper book.

Now as to the date of these writings, Mr. Spedding states that he could find nothing, either in the “scribblings” or in what remains of the book itself, to indicate a date later than the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Mr. Burgoyne gives reasons for concluding that the manuscript was written not later than January, 1597, and he says “it seems more probable that no part of the manuscript was written after 1596.” There are several reasons for assigning this date to the work. One is that the outside list shows that the volume originally contained a copy of Bacon’s Essays. These—the ten short essays which appeared in the first edition—were published in January, 1597,[98] after having been extensively circulated in manuscript. After they were printed it is not likely that the expensive and imperfect method of copying in manuscript would have been resorted to.[99] Again the plays of Richard II and Richard III were first printed in 1597, “and issued,” says Mr. Burgoyne, “at a published price of sixpence each.” After that date, therefore, it seems reasonable to suppose that they would not have been transcribed, or noted for transcription. It is not unimportant to remember that when they were first issued the name of Shakespeare was not on them. In the editions of 1598, however, the hyphenated name, “William Shake-speare,” appears on each, and this is the first appearance of that name on any play. Nash’s “Isle of Dogs” referred to in the outside list was produced at Henslowe’s theatre in 1597, but never printed. Of course all the contents of the volume may not have been written in one year, and it is impossible to fix the exact date of the scribblings. But if, as it appears only reasonable to believe, the Shakespearean plays were transcribed (or even only noted for transcription) before 1597, we have here references to “Shakespeare” as the author of these plays before his name had come before the public as a dramatic author at all, and more than a year before his name appeared on any title page; and, what is certainly remarkable, we find this, at that time little known name closely associated with the name of Francis Bacon.

Who was the writer of the scribble? Mr. Dowse would identify him with John Davies of Hereford, who was born a year after Shakspere of Stratford and died two years after him. This John Davies was of Magdalen College, Oxford, a poet, and, says Mr. Dowse, “a competent scholar.” He took up penmanship as a calling, and “became the most famous teacher of his age; and he taught, not only in many noble and gentle families, but in the royal family itself, for in those days not even nobles and princes were ashamed to write well.” How we could wish that William Shakspere of Stratford had been among his pupils! But what is the evidence that Davies was “the Scribbler”? Let Mr. Dowse state it in his own words: “His numerous sonnets and other poems, as well as his many dedications, addressed to people of note, while friendly, are also respectful and manly (though he could neatly flatter): and their number shows the extent of the circle in which he moved. Within this circle, or rather a section of it, I felt myself to be, while dealing with the page of scribble; and that feeling has been amply justified out of the mouth, or rather by the pen of John Davies himself, for his Works show that he was directly and closely acquainted with nearly all the persons his contemporaries there mentioned; with some indeed he was friendly and familiar. The overwhelming evidence of this fact is of itself sufficient to identify Davies as the scribbler” (p. 8).

This strikes one as rather curious logic. Davies was closely acquainted with nearly all the persons mentioned in “the page of scribble.” Ergo, Davies wrote the scribble!

I hardly think a judge would direct a jury to pay much attention to “evidence” of this description. I have no prepossessions whatever against John Davies of Hereford. I am perfectly willing to believe that he was “the scribbler”; but unless some better proof than this can be adduced, I fear we must regard Mr. Dowse’s theory as mere hypothesis. However, Mr. Dowse tells us that he has other evidence. He refers to Davies’s “Dedicatory and Consolatory Epistle,” addressed to the ninth Earl of Northumberland, which is to be found in the Grenville Library at the British Museum. This, he says, is “with some verbal exceptions written in Davies’s beautiful court-hand.” And he further tells us that “no one who has studied the scribble and then turns to that ‘Consolatory Epistle’ can fail to recognise the same hand at a glance.” Here I am not competent to express an opinion, for I have not examined the Epistle in question, nor have I seen the original of the Northumberland MS., and even if I had inspected both I fear I should be in no better case, for nothing is more dangerous than this identification by comparison of handwriting. Anyone who has served an apprenticeship at the Bar knows how perilous it is to trust to the evidence of “expert witnesses” in this matter. I well remember a case in which the two most famous handwriting experts of their day, in this country at any rate, Messrs. Inglis and Netherclift, swore point blank one against the other, with equal confidence as to certain disputed handwriting, so that the judge felt constrained to tell the jury that they must leave the “expert evidence” out of the question altogether. In the Dreyfus case too, the experts, the renowned M. Bertillon included, seem to have come utterly to grief. One is reminded of the Judge’s famous categories of “liars,” viz., “liars, damned liars, and expert witnesses!” Therefore I think it well to cultivate a little healthy scepticism when Mr. Dowse identifies “at a glance” John Davies’s “beautiful court-hand” with the scribble of the Northumberland MS. Mr. Dowse quotes Thomas Fuller to the effect that “John Davies was the greatest master of the pen that England in his age, beheld”; and goes on to say: “His merits are summarized under the heads of rapidity, beauty, compactness, and variety of styles; which last he so mixed that he made them appear a hundred!” I think one ought to be more than ordinarily cautious in judging of the handwriting of a man who had a hundred different styles. Yet Mr. Dowse undertakes to tell us which of the entries on the outer leaf of the volume are by John Davies, and which by somebody else! I repeat I am quite willing to accept John Davies as the scribbler, but I fear that at present I must regard the hypothesis as “not proven.” I fear Mr. Dowse may have been a little too anxious to find the verification of his preconceived opinion, on his “first scrutiny of Spedding’s facsimile,” that Davies was the man who wrote the scribble. However the fact that Davies seems to have been for some years in the service of Henry Percy, ninth Earl of Northumberland, as teacher of his family (that is, I presume mainly as writing master[100]), and possibly as copyist lends some probability to Mr. Dowse’s surmise.

Mr. Dowse speaks in very bitter terms of Francis Bacon, perhaps unconsciously allowing his bitterness to be accentuated (as we so often find to be the case) by his abhorrence of the Baconian theory of authorship. It is, at any rate, so strong as to lead him into criticism so obviously, and indeed absurdly, unfair as to carry its own refutation with it, and to impair very seriously the value of the critic’s judgment. He assumes that Davies wrote the words “Anthony Comfort, and Consorte,” though why the writing master, who was, according to the hypothesis, in the service of the Earl of Northumberland at the time, should have made this entry it is rather difficult to conjecture. However, says Mr. Dowse, it “shows that he was aware of the relations subsisting between the two brothers—that Anthony was the companion and support of Francis the spendthrift, whom to keep out of prison he impoverished himself, and then did not succeed. It also suggests a rebuke of the toadyism of Francis in selecting and, more suo, grossly flattering the terrible old termagant on the throne as the ‘worthiest person’ in preference to such a brother.” When we remember that “the praise of his soveraigne” was, with the other speeches, written in 1592, to be spoken at a Device presented by Essex before Elizabeth (the idea being, of course, to conciliate the Queen in favour of Essex, and the very fact of Bacon’s authorship being concealed), the suggestion that Davies had in his mind to rebuke Bacon for his “toadyism” because of this purely dramatic performance is, I submit, sufficiently absurd. But that is far from being the worst. I make no complaint whatever that Mr. Dowse will have nothing at all to do with Spedding’s attempted vindication of Bacon in the matter of Essex, or that he will make no allowance whatever for the exigencies of Bacon’s position as counsel in the service of the Crown. Everyone has the right to form his own opinion upon that, as upon other matters of historical controversy. But, says Mr. Dowse, in view of the sentiments which Davies entertained with regard to the families of Northumberland and Essex, “we can imagine how he would feel towards those who were instrumental in bringing Essex to the block.... The man that did more than anyone else towards securing the death of Essex was Francis Bacon, but the MS. was planned, and probably in great part executed, before that repulsive procedure, or the contents might have been very different.” In plain English, Davies, the assumed writer of the scribble, must, after the Essex affair, have felt nothing but hatred and scorn for Francis Bacon, and had Essex’s death taken place before this manuscript was planned, and (probably) in great part executed, “the contents might have been very different”; the meaning of which is, I suppose, either that Bacon’s works would have been omitted altogether, or that the writer would have put on record “a bit of his mind” with regard to the author. But it so happens that some years after this, viz., about 1610, Davies published, in his Scourge of Folly, a sonnet addressed to Bacon in which he speaks of him in highly eulogistic terms. How does Mr. Dowse explain this? I will place his remarks before the reader, and afterwards quote the sonnet in full, and then ask judgment on this very remarkable style of anti-Baconian criticism. “It seems,” writes Mr. Dowse, “that Bacon had recently made him (Davies) a present of money, or more probably had paid him lavishly for some assistance. But the poet’s gratitude takes a singular form:

Thy bounty, and the beauty of thy Witt
Compells my pen to let fall shining ink!