Who was the English originator of the so-called 'Baconian Theory'? Halle, June, 1885. Mr. Appleton Morgan, in his ‘Shakespearean Myth’ (Cincinnati, 1881), at p. 187, when speaking of Mr. William Henry Smith's ‘Letter to Lord Ellesmere,’ in which, according to Mr. Morgan, “the Baconian theory was very plainly and circumspectly laid down and admirably maintained," adds the following foot-note : “This ‘Letter’ was the following year (1857) elaborated into the valuable work on which we have so unsparingly drawn in these pages, and to which we acknowledge our exceeding obligation (‘Bacon and Shakespeare: an Inquiry touching Players, Playhouses, and Playwriters in the Days of Elizabeth,’ by William Henry Smith, London, Smith, Elder & Co., 1857). In this work Mr. Smith (in his preface) asserts that at the date of his letter to Lord Ellesmere he had never seen Miss Bacon’s article in Putnam’s, but, it is to be observed, nowhere claims to have been the originator of the ‘Baconian Theory.”’ Setting aside as immaterial the question of priority, I think it strange that ‘Mr. Morgan should have left unnoticed a most significant passage in Mr. Smith‘s book (the “L’Envoy” at p. 153), which to him as an American might have given even more hesitation than to a European reader. This is the passage: “Go, little Book,—our name is of no note—our recommendation will be of no use to you ;—do good service to us and our publisher, and we will reward you with a red coat with gold facings, and a portrait of the author. By that time our Government, which loves to reward literary labour, will have made us ‘ Baron Bacon,’—and we will issue a new edition, with a coronet in the corner of each leaf—for the American market-where lords are lauded [the italics are mine]. Go, little book ;— weak natures must have recourse to cunning: success salves every sin ; we would not have you savour of a lie, much less be detected in one. You must not say that you came out from the Egyptian Hall ; but you may insinuate that you were written by A— Smith.” This, I think, implies plainly enough that the author of the “little book’ (promoted to the dignity of a “valuable work ” by Mr. Morgan) was either the well-known showman A[lbert] Smith himself or, which I think still more likely, his brother and assistant A[rthur] Smith, who also acted as manager to Dickens and was much esteemed as a man of great ability and devotion to his friends ; after his death, in October, 1861, Dickens wrote that he felt as if his right arm were gone (see Forster‘s ‘Life of Dickens’). The suspicion that the name “ William Henry Smith " was assumed as a mask to hide the real author’s laughing face behind it became settled in my mind when, many years ago, I looked up the‘ London Directory’ for 1857, and was unable to discover a gentleman of that name. I am now writing from memory (except the passage quoted, which was noted down at the time in my collwtanea), but have a dim recollection that at the end of the preface the supposititious author's address is given, and that I did not succeed in tracing a Mr. “ William Henry Smith” among the inhabitants of the house indicated. These facts may easily be ascertained in the Reading Room of the British Museum, if some one or other of my readers should think it worth his while. What if after all the book on which Mr. Morgan confesses to have drawn “so unsparingly,” the book in which the “ Baconian theory” is “circumspectly laid down" and “admirably maintained," should turn out to have been a hoax, concocted at the Egyptian Hall in the merry days of Albert Smith? At all events, this signal prop of the “Baconian theory” deserves to be minutely looked into, as throwing a vivid light not only on the materials of which this monstrous theory has been constructed, but also on the critical faculties of its constructors and their followers. Unfortunately the community of these Baconians has also spread to Germany, where a translation of Mr. Appleton Morgan’s ‘ Shakespearean Myth’ has just been published. K. ELZE.
The Athenaeum, No 3008, June 20, 1885, p.801 (Karl Elze). See alsothe Letter to Lord Ellesmere, 1856 and William Henry Smith, Bacon and Shakespeare: an Inquiry touching Players, Playhouses, and Playwriters in the Days of Elizabeth, London, Smith, Elder & Co., 1857 and its sequel, Bacon and Shakespeare: William Shakespeare: His Position Regarding the Plays, Etc., 1884. W.H. Smith, the writer of these works, was one of the founding members in 1885 of the Francis Bacon Society in London, and its first president for the year of 1886, though he was unable to fulfill the duties of his office because of age and ill health.