and the next dozen pages are a literal transcription of the first act of Henry V. A hundred pages further on we are introduced to Bacon’s brother Anthony. The brothers meet during the progress of a storm—the storm that is described in Act I. Sc. III. of Julius Cæsar. The scene is placed in Dover, and Bacon who
“... never till to-night, never till now,
Did I go through a tempest dropping fire,”
happened in the streets upon
“A common slave,” who
“Held up his left hand, which did flame and burn
Like twenty torches joined; and yet his hand,
Not sensible of fire, remained unscorched.
Against the Citadell I met a lion,
Who glared upon me, and went surly by
Without annoying me.”
Bacon, in his normal moods, employs the royal style of “we” and “us” when referring to himself, but in moments of agitation, when, for instance, slaves and lions promenade the thoroughfares of Dover, he drops, instinctively, like a Scotchman into his native manner. “Whilst walking thus,” he continues:
“Submitting me unto the hideous night,
And bared my bosom to the thunderstone,”
“I met foster-brother Anthony,” who said,
“O Francis, this disturbed city is not to walk in,
Who ever knew the heavens menace so?...
Let’s to an inn.”
It might be thought that the foregoing instances have been carefully sought out and employed to italicise the foolishness of Dr. Owen’s statement that the plays were first composed in this form, and that in this form alone is their true meaning and relevancy fully demonstrated. Such, however, is far from being the fact. If the reader will take the trouble to wade through the mass of incoherent commonplace, illuminated as it is by passages of Shakespeare’s brilliant wit and inspired poesy which make up these five volumes, he will find scores upon scores of such meaningless and inopportune mis-quotations.