THE GREAT CRYPTOGRAM.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9124, 4 August 1888, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE GREAT CRYPTOGRAM.

A REVIEW. [BY SIR WILLIAM FOX.]

Mr. Donnelly, having, as he thinks, accomplished the task of demolishing Will Shakspere claim to be. the author of Shakespeare's Plays, enters on the more difficult undertaking of showing who was the real author. The first was the easiest task. Shakspere was really only in possession 011 sufferance, though his occupation had been long acquiesced in by an unonquiring public, who accepted the fact simply because they found him where he was, and none to gainsay his right to be there. But the moment his title comes in question it is seen how little it rests upon. There are hardly a dozen well authenticated facts 011 record affecting either himself or his connexions ; and, such as they are, they almost all require to be explained away by apologists before the claim made on his behalf can appear even plausible. Anything beyond this which seem* to connect him with the authorship of the plays is the merest hypothesis, resting almost entirely 011 imagination and ingenious, but illogical, inferences from alleged but improved facts. A more amusing instance of sophistical leger - domain, a more unsuccessful attempt to make a pyramid stand on its apex, we never met with than one in the "Life of Shakspere" in the current edition of the Encyclopedia Britanniea. Finding himself face to face with the necessity of proving that Shaksj 1 "e understood Latin, probably (ireuk, Italian, and French, while there was not the smallest tittle of actual evidence to show that he had ever been at school or college, or had anyone near him capable of instructing him, here is how the ingenious writer builds up his syllogism : — First, it is admitted, he says, that there was a grammar school in Stratford. Well t hen, of course Shakspere would go there (though there was no compulsory education, and his father was an ignorant and bookless man). Equally, of course, he would go there when he was seven years of age, and, of course, would stay there for six years, till he was thirteen, when he was apprenticed. Then, of course, Latin, and possibly (Jreek, would be taught in that school; and then the writer guesses at. the elementary books which, of course, would be used, the highest of these being that very elementary one which in our own school days we used irreverently to call "Corduroy Colloquies." Considering that he had first to acquire a knowledge of English grammar, reading, writing, and arithmetic, this is certainly the highest step 011 the classical ladder that Shakspere, if he were there nt all, would climb in six years of early boyhood ; but this writer ingeniously suggests that, of course, there mi'jht be advanced teaching for the 1 higher classes (which it is morally certain William Shakspere, who left at 13, never reached). Here was an equipment for a familiar acquaintance with the great authors of antiquity! But it was necessary still to show that Shakspere had acquired a knowledge of modern languages also —Italian and French at leas!. It was clear that he got none of these at Strutford, in school or out of it ; so the writer supposes that "the very moment that? he felt himself within the atmosphere of London, the first thimj he would do" would be to find the means of acquiring these languages ; and, as there was at that time a very distinguished Italian gentleman in London, intimate with the nobility, and teaching Italian to the aristocracy, of course the Stratford 'prentice, horsekeeper, and call-boy got hold of him, and so acquired not' only Italian, but French ! Of all this there is not one iota of proof, except that there is in the British Museum a copy of a book written by that Italian, and which someone thinks did once belong to Shakspere. Was there ever a more frivolous and puerile attempt than this to make a mountain out of a molehill ? Yet it is only a sample of every attempt which has been made to show that Shakspere possessed the literary qualifications which it was absolutely necessary that the writer of the plays must have possessed. There probably never was any person who became famous who had so little visible connexion with that which made him famous as Will Shakspere. Having, as he considers, made this quite clear in his first 120 pages, Mr. Donnelly goes on to accumulate proof upon proof through the remainder of his book of 998 pages to show that Francis Bacon had all the qualifications and all the surroundings necessary to support the claim which he puts before the public on his behalf. Space will not permit us to do more than simply to indicate his lines of argument, and, perhaps, ref mark on a few of its mors salient points. I

1. That Bacon was a Poet ; that he had all the poetic temperament, and the skill to soar to the highest flights* of imagination. Those who have read Bacon's great works will require no proof of this ; but we may give a single quotation from Macaulay, the severest of all Bacon's critics as regards his general career: — "The poetical faculty," ho says, " was powerful in Bacon's mind; but not, like his wit, so powerful as to usurp the place of reason and to tyrannise over the whole man. No imagination was ever at once so strong and so thoroughly subjugated. It gave noble proofs of its vigour. In truth, much of Bacon's life was passed in a visionary world, amidst things as strange as any that are described in the Arabian tales."

2. That he was a Philosopher goes without aaying. " If," says Mr. Donnelly, " I can establish that the writer of the plays was a philosopher, we shall come very near to getting the two beads under one hat." The fact is so evident as to need little illustration.

3. The Argument from the Geography of the 1 '[.ays. This is a very strong point, both in favour of Bacon and against Shakspere. The writer of the article, " Shakspere," before referred to, introduces his subject with eight pages quarto of double columns, containing an historical and picturesque account of the county of Warwick, in which Shakspere's birthplace of Stratford was situated, and lie goes on to argue that it was by the Warwickshire traditions and rural scenery that Shakspere's mind became so saturated as to produce the records of battles and poetical pictures which abound in the plays. Never did anyone more completely cut his own throat than this Shaksperian apologist. ; for one of the most remarkable features of the plays is that in no single instance is there the slightest allusion to Stratford-on-Avon, or any other portion of or thing in Warwickshire, unless it be a not very certain allusion to Sir Thomas Lacy, who had punished Shakspere for poaching before he ran off to London. On the other hand, the plays are full of allusions (by name) to the town of St. Albany, in Hertfordshire ; no less than '23 times is it mentioned in the plays, and the scenes of events in three at least of his historical plays are laid there. Now, Bacon spent much of his boyhood at Gorhambury, close to St. Albans ; his widowed mother, Lady Ann, lived there, and, after her husband's death, Bacon often visited her there ; both his titles, Baron of St. Albans and Viscount Verulan, are taken from that place ; and there Bacon was buried, close to his mother's grave. He must have been perfectly familiar with the battlefields on which several of the scenes of the historical plays are laid, and have heard recorded the traditions of the events which are worked up m the plays. Again, York Place, in London, where one of the scenes is laid, was the very house where Bacon was born, and wherein his father died. The county of Kent also figures conspicuously in other places, and Kentish homes are highly praised. Now, Bacon's father was a Kentish man. Where all this time was Stratford and Warwickshire? Clearly not in the mind of the writer of these plays. This section of Mr. Donnelly's argument, though brief, is exceedingly suggestive, both for Bacon and against Shakspere. 4. " The Politics ok the Plays," which occupies '25 pages, is also weighty as that which follows, "The Religion of the Plays, ' both of which lean heavily to Bacon's side. "The Purpose of the Plays," 32 pages more. These three heads ate all important, but too elaborate for analysis within our limits.

The next chapter (VII.) is a very important one. It will naturally be asked, " If Bacon wrote the plays, why did he not acknowledge them ?" This chapter suggests several answers, a combination of which it is probable will be held to account for the fact. One probably was the same which influenced Sir Walter Scott for many years to conceal the authorship of " Waverley" and a long series of other novels, and even deliberately to deny the fact when driven into a corner by King George the Fourth. Scott was a practising lawyer, and so was Bacon ; each depended on his practice for a livelihood ; and for a lawyer to be known as a novel writer or a playwright (particularly in Bacon's day) was almost certain death to his professional prospects. But in Bacon's case there was, during a long period, a more deterring reason than this. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth the air was full of treasonable plots, and no man who played a hand in public was free from suspicion. " Richard II.," one of the plays, was considered by the Queen as a direct incitement to treason and to her own deposition by death, if necessary. Alluding to it, she is said to have exclaimed on one occasion, "I am Richard II." It was one of the counts in the indictment against the Earl of Essex, who suffered 011 the scaffold, that he had had that play performed before himself. The Queen is said to have been excited to the utmost, and most eager to ascertain the true authorship. If it had been known as Bacon's, ho would have probably had to follow his friend, Essex, to the block ; and, when we know from the great political events of his life what an utter moral coward Bacon was, there was ample ground, no doubt, for concealment. The Cryptogram has already led up to the subject, and will probably divulge more. For other weighty reasons which may have deterred Bacon from letting the secret authorship be known we must refer him to the work itself.

Then follows a chapter of some 35 pages of "Corroborating Circumstances some of them of a very curious character, and which contain many points which the " Shaksperists" will find difficult to masticate. And then we come to Part 111., which, to the rqally intelligent student, will probably form one of the most interesting portions of the book. It fills upwards of '240 pages, and consists of the parallelisms" between the plays and Bacon's acknowledged writings. In these chapters Mr. Donnelly has placed side by side many hundreds of parallel passages which occur in both, They are arranged systematically under several heads—(l) Identical Expressions; (2) Identical Metaphors ; (3) Identical Opinions ; (4) Identical Quotations; (5) Identical Studies; (6) Identical Errors; (7) Identical Use of Unusual Words ; (8) Identity of Character ; (9) Identities of Style.

We will venture to say that, supposing Bacon not to have been the author of the plays, there is no other instance in literary history of any such remarkable parallelisms between two writers of the same period. Take Addison and Dr. Johnson, Pope and Robertson, Blackstone and Sheridan, Dickens and Froude, or whomsoever you please to put in couples, and see how many " parallelisms" you will find; "parallelisms," be it remembered, for the most part representing the intellectual idiosyncrasies of one of the supposed writers. The only reasonable result which, Mr. Donnelly contends, can be arrived at is, as he well expresses it, " that we have got the two heads under one hat in other words, that Bacon wrote Shakspore's Plays, or that Sliakspere wrote the " Novum Organum," the " Advancement of Learning," the "Atlantis," and all the other tomes of philosophy and general literature of which one who is pronounced by all literary critics to have been the greatest genius of his age is the acknowledged parent. Many, no doubt, will be ready to say that Mr. Donnelly's arguments are all based on circumstantial evidence. Well, what other evidence can we have in the year 1888? The only direct or positive evidence we ever could have had would have been out of the living mouth of Shakspere or Bacon, one or the other standing up in the witness-box, and saying, " Adsuni qui feci." Since the deaths of those two, all the evidence on the subject has necessarily been circumstantial. Even the fact that Shakspere's name at one time (and in his lifetime) appeared on the title-page of the printed edition of the plays is only circumstantial evidence, and not very strong either. For the first six years after they began to be published there was no name on the title-pages ; afterwards, when the name was there, it was not spelled as Shakspere himself ever spelt it, still less as it is spelt in the bond he gave when he was married, nor as it is on his monument in Stratford Church at this day. That monument is itself only circumstantial evidence of Shakspere having lived or even died ; and, if we remember rightly (it is m;> f ny years since we saw it), though it represents Shakspere with a pen in his haiv.i, it says not a word about the plays, to the supposed authorship of which he ov/ e the fact that he was even known bey find the little town of Stratford. If the evidence is circumstantial on the one side, it i/; equally so on the other. But the prejudice against circumstantial evidence is the prejudice of

the crassest ignorance. Half the lawsuits and prosecutions in our courts of law (probably much more) are decided on circumstantial evidence. We are told sometimes that circumstantial evidence is like a chain —if there be one weak link, it breaks down. This, no doubt, is so, when the links are all dependent upon each other. But much oftener circumstantial evidence is not a chain, made up of links, but a rope made up of many strands, half of which may be rotten and yet the remainder ?uite strong enough to sustain the weight, t is so with the evidence in the Shak-spere-Bacon case; and, if one-half of the strands in Mr. Donnelly's rope of circumstances were proved to be rotten, and cut away, which we by no means admit they should be, he would probably contend that the result was just as before. If he has put too much hemp into hi 3 rope, it is none the worse for it.

And now we have arrived at the reasonable limits of our paper, and not one word of explanation yet about that Great Cryptogram. It was necessary to deal with this introductory matter, which occupies the whole of the first of Mr. Donnelly's two volumes. We hope in another article to be able to explain the thing itself, which is really the great discovery to which he lays claim, and which, if proved, is one of the most remarkable literary and historical discoveries ever made since letters and books were invented.