Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/257

 judgment of a toady, and exaggerated their quantity as well as quality. This method for breaking the force of Matthew's postscript I reject, for the simple reason that it is not only strained, but superfluous; for Bacon published his "History of Henry VII." in March, 1622, the "De Augmentis" in October, 1623, and the "Apothegms" in December, 1624. One of these books, probably the first of them, and the first which Matthew had received from Bacon since he was made Viscount St. Albans, was sent; and Matthew took the first opportunity to flatter Bacon with his title in connection with his genius, saying in the postscript, "A most prodigious wit is my friend Bacon, though he now passes by the other designation as Viscount St. Albans."

It is alleged that Bacon did not wish to be reputed a poet, lest his preferment and prospects at the Court should be impaired. It seems to me that he needed not to dread the imputation of having written poems. Veins of a lively fancy run through the prose of his great treatises, and he was largely endowed with the scientific imagination; but his verses are dry as a remainder biscuit. The divine art was not in those days imputed to any man on such pretences.

One advocate of the Baconian theory thinks that the poems of "Lucrece" and "Adonis" were dedicated to Southampton, under the name of Shakspeare, as an arranged and designed cover, for the real author. But why, supposing this, was Shakspeare selected as the cover? A man selected for such a purpose must have been deemed by contemporaries competent to have