with snow, he began to wonder whether snow would not preserve flesh from decay; and stepping out of his coach into a poultry-shop, he bought a fowl, and with his own hands stuffed it with snow. This operation brought on a chill; and feeling ill, he was compelled to stop at the house of a friend, Lord Arundel's, where, being put into an unaired bed, he contracted a fever, of which he died. Now let any man, tolerably familiar with Shakespeare's dramas, imagine for a moment whether the author of Hamlet and Lear was likely, on observing the ground covered with snow,

beautiful snow,

Filling the sky and the earth below,
Over the house-tops, over the street,
Over the heads of the people you meet,
Flying to kiss a fair lady's cheek;
Clinging to lips in a frolicsome freak!
Beautiful snow! from the heavens above,
Pure as an angel and fickle as love!

let him imagine, I say, for a moment, whether the author of these plays would at such a sight, engage in speculating

as

to whether snow would preserve dead chickens from decay, and actually stop and stuff one with his own hands to see if it would remain untainted! Would not the mind of Shakespeare have been engaged in reflections of quite a different nature? The action of Lord Bacon was quite in keeping with his character as a practical utilitarian philosopher; but it was entirely out of keeping with the nature of the speculative, dreamy, castle-building character-studying Poet. Shakespeare, it is true, hit upon great physical truths by poetic inspiration; but he hardly went to work to find them out by actual experiment. He was more interested, naturally, in human character, in human aims and hopes, in beauty of expression, in the power of thought and example, than in the discovery of useful truths in natural science.

These considerations may not, it is true, influence the views of any man who is bound to be singular in such matters; but to one who is accustomed to

rational thinking and reasonable conclusions, they must form a chain of evidence, strong as links of iron, in proof of the fact that the author of Shakespeare's plays and that of Bacon's philosophical works are not, and can not be, one and the same person, We may,

therefore dismiss the subject with the assurance, that notwithstanding the widespread plot to destroy Shakespeare's reputation and to erase his name from literature, he "still lives," and will continue to live, as long as the language lives in which his immortal works are written. Like the Prince in whom he portrayed his own character,

he still survives,

To mock the expectation of the world,
To frustrate prophecies, and to raze out
Rotten opinion, who hath writ him down
After his seeming.

22

INDEX.

Age of Elizabeth, its mental | Baconians, their attempt to

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