entitled "Notes on the Bacon-Shakespeare Question," he shows that when Shakespeare uses a legal word, technically, other litterateurs of his day have done as he, and oftener than he. Dekker, Wilkins, Middleton, Spenser, Donne, Beaumont and Fletcher, Field, Chapman, Massinger, Marston, Nash, Heywood, Ford, Shirley, Greene, Peele, Lyly, Webster, Rowley, Cook are cited for their "law," many of them repeatedly. As for Ben Jonson, his love of this "branch of learning" was violent, and scores of passages are quoted from his works. Chapman also has a paragraph in his "All Fools," which contains a hundred technical terms of law, so that, as Judge Allen says, "If Hamlet's collection of legal terms goes to show that the play was written by Bacon, the play of All Fools' must have been written by Coke himself."

In a remarkably keen and analytical review of this book,' and incidentally of the entire controversy, Henry Austin Clapp, Esq., gives a charming glance at the poetic side of the question. He says:

"Judge Allen has a capitally good chapter on Bacon's acknowledged verses. And, after quoting Sir Francis's translation of the 1st Psalm and portions of his version of the 90th and 104th, says, 'Of course a good poet may write bad verses occasionally,' but the peculiarity of Bacon's case is that never by an accident did he stumble on a good line. The proposition of the Baconians involves the conclusion that the

'Boston Daily Advertiser, April 21, 1900.

writer of "The Merchant of Venice," "The Tempest," and "A Midsummer Night's Dream" had degenerated into writing such clumsy verse as these translations, and that he deemed the latter worthy of preservation and publication with his name. And Judge Allen might go a very little farther and add that Bacon's careful conserving of his lyrics is nearly proof positive that he was void of poetical taste and discrimination as well as of poetical genius. A man possessed with a scrap of judgment in this kind could not have suffered such lyrics to be handed down as the sole authentic examples of his poetic ability. It will not be amiss to reprint here said translation of the 1st Psalm:

"Who never gave to wicked reed

A yielding and attentive ear;
Who never sinner's paths did tread,

Nor sat him down in scorner's chair;
But maketh it his whole delight

On law of God to meditate,

And therein spendeth day and night;
That man is in a happy state.

"He shall be like the fruitful tree,
Planted along a running spring,
Which, in due season, constantly

A goodly yield of fruit doth bring;
Whose leaves continue always green,

And are no prey to winter's power?
So shall that man not once be seen
Surprised with an evil hour.

"With wicked men it is not so,
Their lot is of another kind:
All as the chaff, which to and fro
Is tossed at mercy of the wind.

And when he shall in judgment plead,

A casting sentence bide he must;
So shall he not lift up his head
In the assembly of the just.

"For why? the Lord hath special eye
To be the godly's stay at call;
And hath given over, righteously,

The wicked man to take his fall.'"

Since we now leave Lord Verulam and his incontestible greatness, we add a final excerpt from another of his works, the "Essayes." In the course of a few chapters the reader will be made acquainted with Shakespeare's love of dancing and revelry; the following is Bacon's essay on one of the principal phases of the revelry of that epoch, the masques and triumphs which preceded the introduction of opera into England. As the essay is short, we quote it entire :

"OF MASQUES AND TRIUMPHS.

“These things are but Toyes, to come amongst such Serious Observations. But yet, since Princes will have such Things, it is better that they should be Graced with Elegancy, than daubed with Cost. Dancing to Song is a Thing of great I understand it, that the Song be in and accompanied with some broken Musicke; And the Ditty fitted to the Device.

State, and Pleasure.

Quire, placed aloft,

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Acting in Song, especially in Dialogues, hath an extreme Good Grace; I say Acting, not Dancing, (For that is a Meane and Vulgar Thing;) And the Voices of the Dialogue would be Strong and Manly (A Base and a Tenour; No Treble;) And