[65] “Insignia hæc amoris et mæstitiæ monumenta.” These were published by Rawley under the title of Manes Verulamiani, in 1626, the year of Bacon’s death. [Ed.]
[66] S. Collins, Rector of King’s College, Cambridge, writes, in the Manes Verulamiani:
Henricus neque Septimus tacetur,
Et quicquid venerum politiorum, et
Si quid præterii inscius libellum
Quos magni peperit vigor Baconi.
Where the appended translation reads: “Nor must the Seventh Henry fail of mention, or if aught there be of more cultured loves, aught that I unwitting have passed over of the works which the vigor of great Bacon hath produced.” A note explains “quicquid venerum politiorum” as “stories of love more spiritually interpreted,” and refers to Bacon’s De Sapientia Veterum.
The author of No. XVIII of the Manes tells us that “the Day Star of the Muses hath fallen ere his time! Fallen, ah me, is the very care and sorrow of the Clarian god [Phœbus to wit], thy darling, nature and the world’s—Bacon: aye—passing strange—the grief of very Death.
What privilege did not the crule Destiny [Atropos, one of the Fates] claim? Death would fain spare, and yet she [Atropos] would not. Melpomene, chiding, would not suffer it, and spake these words to the stern goddesses [the Parcæ, or Fates]: ‘Never was Atropos truly heartless before now; keep thou all the world, only give my Phœbus back.’” It is to be noted that the Muse who here speaks of Bacon as her “Phœbus,” or Apollo, is Melpomene the Muse of Tragedy. [Ed.]
[67] But “moral philosophy,” the words used both by “Shakespeare” and Bacon, are the correct translation of τῆς πολιτικῆς. “Political philosophy” would have been a wrong translation. Moreover, Erasmus, before “Shakespeare” and Bacon, had rightly translated πολιτικῆς by “moral philosophy.” [Ed.]
[68] Items (e), (f), (g) and (h) are lifted without material alteration from my Bacon-Shakespeare Essay.
[69] The story of the Merchant of Venice is, as is well known, founded on the Pecorone of Ser Giovanni, Day IV, Novel I. See my Is there a Shakespeare Problem? p. 91. et seq. [Ed.]
[70] See also the forty-sixth Sonnet. [Ed.]