THE plays of Shakespeare show so much knowledge, thought and learning, that many people—those who imagine that universities furnish capacity—contend that Bacon must have been the author.
We know Bacon. We know that he was a scheming politician, a courtier, a time-server of church and king, and a corrupt judge. We know that he never admitted the truth of the Copernican system—that he was doubtful whether instruments were of any advantage in scientific investigation—that he was ignorant of the higher branches of mathematics, and that, as a matter of fact, he added but little to the knowledge of the world. When he was more than sixty years of age, he turned his attention to poetry, and dedicated his verses to George Herbert.
If you will read these verses you will say that the author of "Lear" and "Hamlet" did not write them.
Bacon dedicated his work on the Advancement of Learning, Divine and Human, to James I., and in his dedication he stated that there had not been, since the time of Christ, any king or monarch so learned in all erudition, divine or human. He placed James the First before Marcus Aurelius and all other kings and emperors since Christ, and concluded by saying that James the First had "the power and fortune of a king, the illumination of a priest, the learning and universality of a philosopher." This was written of James the First, described by Macauley as a "stammering, slobbering, trembling coward, whose writings were deformed by the grossest and vilest superstitions—witches being the special objects of his fear, his hatred, and his persecution."
It seems to have been taken for granted that if Shakespeare was not the author of the great dramas, Lord Bacon must have been.
It has been claimed that Bacon was the greatest philosopher of his time. And yet in reading his works we find that there was in his mind a strange mingling of foolishness and philosophy. He takes pains to tell us, and to write it down for the benefit of posterity, that "snow is colder than water, because it hath more spirit in it, and that quicksilver is the coldest of all metals, because it is the fullest of spirit."
He stated that he hardly believed that you could contract air by putting opium on top of the weather glass, and gave the following reason:
"I conceive that opium and the like make spirits fly rather by malignity than by cold."
This great philosopher gave the following recipe for staunching blood:
"Thrust the part that bleedeth into the body of a capon, new ripped and bleeding. This will staunch the blood. The blood, as it seemeth, sucking and drawing up by similitude of substance the blood it meeteth with, and so itself going back."