And in Essay 38:

Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom extinguished.

4.

To die, to sleep!

To sleep, perchance to dream! Ay, there's the rub ;
For, in that sleep of death, what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause. There's the respect

That makes calamity of so long life.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,

That patient merit of the unworthy takes
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death.
The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns-puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?

And in Essay 2:

(III. 1.)

Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark.

And while we are observing these coincidences, the legal knowledge displayed by the dramatist must come as strong confirmation of Bacon's authorship, there having been no other lawyer, at that day, equal to its composition. And we

say this without forgetting that the authors of 'Gorboduc' and 'Cambyses' both both were

LL.D.

Nor must we neglect to notice the "idle conceits and contemptible equivocations" of which Dr. Johnson complains; for they were faults to which Bacon was always prone. That they often spoilt his rare eloquence when speaking cannot be doubted; because Ben Jonson, when describing it, expressly limits his praise to those occasions, when he could "spare and pass by a jest."

We do not, however, hold Bacon responsible for the fustian, which takes the form of awkward and absurd amplifications of that we have already given an example (Chapter III.), and we will now add two more, placing the amplification in Italics.

The queen, who is remarking to 'Hamlet' on his grief, asks why his father's death seems so particular. On which he says:

Seems, madam! nay it is. I know not seems.
'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspirations of forc'd breath,

No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,

Nor the dejected haviour of the visage,

Together with all forms, modes, shows of grief
That can denote me truly. These, indeed, "seem;
For they are actions that a man might play;
But I have that within that passeth show;

These but the trappings and the suits of woe. (I. 2.)

The second is in Ophelia's beautiful speech :

Oh! what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!
The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword;
The expectancy and rose of the fair state,

The glass of fashion and the mould of form. (III. 1.)

Now the reader cannot fail to observe how complete and harmonious the passages are without the amplification--how confused and unsatisfactory with it. Shall we commit the absurdity of thinking, that our author, who could write such beautiful passages, would choose so to entangle them? Must we not rather conclude that the amplifications were the work of an incompetent reviser? Henslowe's Diary contains several entries of payments to authors for improving other people's plays; and Shakespeare a shrewd, but illiterate man of business, might very naturally have employed some experienced dramatist to revise this first attempt of the

young lawyer? And an experienced dramatist might easily have amended its very defective dramatic construction. Instead of that, he seems to have seized on some of the finest speeches and tried to amend what was beyond amendment.

CHAPTER XIX.

AUTHORSHIP OF THE PLAYS, CONTINUED.

6

Francis Bacon, the Reviser.

It is quite likely that Shakespeare, after the success of Hamlet '—and of its success there can be no doubt-should propose to Bacon the revision of all the plays he obtained from other authors; and that Bacon's want of money, which Hepworth Dixon has so vividly portrayed, may have induced Bacon to accept this proposal. And that, in our opinion, is what actually occurred. But we can all understand that Bacon would wish the fact kept secret. To have written a play was one thing-the Earl of Dorset and the Master of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, had done the same-but it was another thing to figure as the paid servant of the players, men whose evil life and pernicious example were a constant theme of animadversion to the municipal authorities of London and West