Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 9.djvu/211

 9*8. IX. MARCH 15, 1902.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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Entry No. 1422 is as follows : "Removing (Remuant)."

Mrs. Pott could not find Bacon using the note in his acknowledged work ; but, never- theless, he did so :

"A hasty fortune maketh an enterpriser and remover (the French hath it better, entreprenant, or remnant) ; but the exercised fortune maketh the able man."' Essay of Fortune.' The following passages from Shakespeare are supposed to illustrate Bacon's note : She moves me not, or not removes, at least, Affection's edge in me.

' Taming of the Shrew,' Act I. sc. n.

Any soul removed.

' 1 Henry IV.,' Act IV. sc. i. 1. 35. All thy safety were remotion.

4 Tim on of Athens,' Act IV. sc. iii. This act persuades me that this remotion is practice only. ' Lear,' Act II. sc. iv.

Under No. 1432 occurs the note "The avenues."

In illustrating the note from Shakespeare Mrs. Pott quotes many passages which use the words "gates," "pathways," "road," "way," &c., just as if these words, like "remove" and "remotion " in the preceding instance, were peculiar to Shakespeare and Bacon ; and she goes further than this, for in her preface, p. 50, she asserts that the word "avenues" is not only not in Shake- speare, but it is absent also from Bacon's prose work. I will quote from Bacon, and it will be seen that he not only has a fixed way of employing the word, but that he always associates it with the words " approaches " or " entrances."

1. "Since the last parliament, it is also notorious in every man's knowledge and remembrance that the Spaniards have possessed themselves of that avenue and place of approach for England," &c. ' Speech on the Subsidy Bill,' 1597.

2. "How great the honour is, to keep the approaches or avenues of this kingdom, I hear many discourse."' Advice to Essex, 3 March, 1599.

3. "If physicians will learn and use the true approaches and avenues of nature," &c. ' Advance- ment of Learning,' book ii.

4. " But their approaches and avenues are taken away." * General Naturalization,' February, 1606/7.

5. " Causeways in the avenues and entrances of the towns abroad beyond the seas." ' Charge on Opening the Court of the Verge,' 1611.

Other cases could be cited to show that Bacon employs the word in the same very peculiar way.

Then there is the word "real," which is put under No. 401, and which Mrs. Pott thinks Bacon may have introduced into the English language. "Real," in the sense of 44 royal," was a common word in English

several hundred years before Bacon was born, and it occurs many times in Chaucer. " Real," as opposed to " nominal," was also in use in England long before Bacon was born, as witness the opposing sects of the Nominalists and the Realists. The Spanish coin, a reale, was also well known to Englishmen before Bacon's time. Yet Mrs. Pott, mistaking the object of Bacon's note, which is revealed by the entry that he places under it, " Forma dat esse," makes a parade of the fact that Shakespeare uses "royal" for "real," that he puns upon the coins "noble" and "real," and that he employs " real " in the sense of being opposed to " unreal." Shakespeare is quoted thus :

Host. My lord, there is a nobleman would speak to you.

P. Hen. Give him as much as will make him a royal man, and send him back.

' 1 Henry IV.,' Act II. sc. iv.

Mrs. Pott does not attempt to show that Bacon anywhere associated the Spanish coin with the English word " real," and she over- looks the fact that the dramatists of the time were often guilty of making most wretched puns on the names of coins. It was a common device to play on "angel," "ducats," &c. Thus in * The First Part of Jeronimo ' Kyd has several nonsensical puns on "ducats," which become " ducks, dainty ducks " ; and in ' Sir John Oldcastle ' and in many other plays money is given the cant name of "golden ruddocks" or "robin-red- breasts." Hence Shakespeare was but fol- lowing a general lead, and there is nothing unusual or strange in his pun, supposing him to be connecting " royal " with the Spanish "reale" a point which is open to serious question. He may have merely meant " royal " to stand for " kingly," or something greater in rank than a "nobleman." "Royal" in this sense is used in a somewhat similar passage by Massinger, and in relation to money :

Wellborn. I will pay you in private.

Order. A royal gentleman !

Furnace. Royal as an emperor ! He '11 prove a brave master ; my good lady knew To choose a man.


 * A New Way to Pay Old Debts,' Act IV. sc. ii.

'The Fable of Cupid,' as told by Bacon, and his interpretation of it, explain the precise use to which he meant to put his note, for there and elsewhere he associates the scholas- tic " real " with the Platonic dictum " Forma dat esse," as well as with his other ' Promus ' note, No. 765, "He came of an egge." Now if there were no other evidence to disprove Bacon's title to the Shakespeare plays and poems it could be found in this word " real,"