#baconian

[explorerrowan]

The glove-maker's son wrote it all. Get over it.

[discoverpi]

[akaito-893]

code

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[snailandhammer]

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. 

[snailandhammer]

I respectfully, accordingly, present the opened Cipher in Othello. OTHELLO. A tale, oh ! I tell, oh ! Oh, dell, oh ! What wail, oh ! Oh, hill, oh ! What willow !* What hell oh ! What will, oh ! At will, oh ! At well, oh ! I dwell, oh ! * That this particular catch was designed by the author is proven in Desdemona's song of the " Willow."

Report to the British Museum on Behalf of the Annals of Great Britain and the Reign of Her Majesty Queen Victoria. Discovery and opening of the Cipher of Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, alike in his Prose writings and in the ' Shakespeare ' Dramas, proving him the Author of the Dramas. By Mrs. C. F. Ashmead Windle. (Letters Patent of England to be procured.) San Francisco : J. Winterburn and Co., Book and Job Printers, 1882.

[snailandhammer]

MR. SIDNEY LEE. LEE, SIDNEY, Cryptogrammatist, was born in Verulam Buildings, Gray's Inn, in 1859. He is reported to have said at the age of three, 'Donnelly's theory was rash, but mine shall be rasher.' Hence it is that when Mr. Lee set to work, he went further than most Baconians; he maintained that Shakespeare's work is not merely Bacon's, but Bacon and Greene's. His Life of Bacon (1898), brought him much fame, and is still being re-issued in a variety of editions, including a version in words of one syllable for the nursery. Mr. Lee is the editor of the most serious imitation and rival of the present work—The Dictionary of National Biography, which has been described as 'Who's Who (the undertaker intervening).' Mr. Lee's favourite recreation is swan-shooting on the Avon. Authorities: Letters from Dead Authors, Memoires d' Outre Toinbe.

Lives of the 'lustrious: A Dictionary of Irrational Biography (1901) By Sidney Stephen and Leslie Lee. This parody of the Dictionary of National Biography was published the same year as the completion of the DNB. The pseudonymous author(s) names interchange those of the DNB editors Sidney Lee and Leslie Stephen. At the time, Lee was under heavy criticism in the literary press from Baconians for his Life of William Shakespeare, and conversely Lee was extremely critical of Baconians in his Life and elsewhere. The actual authors of Lives of the 'Lustrious were E.V. Lucas and C.L. Graves, who collaborated on a number of pieces of literary satire, including War of the Weenuses, a parody of H.G. Wells's War of the Worlds, and separate parodies of Sherlock Holmes for Punch.

[thepresentisindefinite]

On Dreams by Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682)

Half our days we pass in the shadow of the earth; and the brother of death exacteth a third part of our lives. A good part of our sleep is peered out with visions and fantastical objects, wherein we are confessedly deceived. The day supplieth us with truths; the night with fictions and falsehoods, which uncomfortably divide the natural account of our beings. And, therefore, having passed the day in sober labours and rational enquiries of truth, we are fain to betake ourselves unto such a state of being, wherein the soberest heads have acted all the monstrosities of melancholy, and which unto open eyes are no better than folly and madness.

Happy are they that go to bed with grand music, like Pythagoras, or have ways to compose the fantastical spirit, whose unruly wanderings take off inward sleep, filling our heads with St. Anthony’s visions, and the dreams of Lipara in the sober chambers of rest.

Virtuous thoughts of the day lay up good treasures for the night; whereby the impressions of imaginary forms arise into sober similitudes, acceptable unto our slumbering selves and preparatory unto divine impressions. Hereby Solomon’s sleep was happy. Thus prepared, Jacob might well dream of angels upon a pillow of stone. And the best sleep of Adam might be the best of any after.

That there should be divine dreams seems unreasonably doubted by Aristotle. That there are demoniacal dreams we have little reason to doubt. Why may there not be angelical? If there be guardian spirits, they may not be inactively about us in sleep; but may sometimes order our dreams: and many strange hints, instigations, or discourses, which are so amazing unto us, may arise from such foundations.

But the phantasms of sleep do commonly walk in the great road of natural and animal dreams, wherein the thoughts or actions of the day are acted over and echoed in the night. Who can therefore wonder that Chrysostom should dream of St. Paul, who daily read his epistles; or that Cardan, whose head was so taken up about the stars, should dream that his soul was in the moon! Pious persons, whose thoughts are daily busied about heaven, and the blessed state thereof, can hardly escape the nightly phantasms of it, which though sometimes taken for illuminations, or divine dreams, yet rightly perpended may prove but animal visions, and natural night-scenes of their awaking contemplations.

Many dreams are made out by sagacious exposition, and from the signature of their subjects; carrying their interpretation in their fundamental sense and mystery of similitude, whereby, he that understands upon what natural fundamental every notion dependeth, may, by symbolical adaptation, hold a ready way to read the characters of Morpheus. In dreams of such a nature, Artemidorus, Achmet, and Astrampsichus, from Greek, Egyptian, and Arabian oneirocriticism, may hint some interpretation: who, while we read of a ladder in Jacob’s dream, will tell us that ladders and scalary ascents signify preferment; and while we consider the dream of Pharaoh, do teach us that rivers overflowing speak plenty, lean oxen, famine and scarcity; and therefore it was but reasonable in Pharaoh to demand the interpretation from his magicians, who, being Egyptians, should have been well versed in symbols and the hieroglyphical notions of things. The greatest tyrant in such divinations was Nabuchodonosor, while, besides the interpretation, he demanded the dream itself; which being probably determined by divine immission, might escape the common road of phantasms, that might have been traced by Satan.

When Alexander, going to besiege Tyre, dreamt of a Satyr, it was no hard exposition for a Grecian to say, “Tyre will be thine.” He that dreamed that he saw his father washed by Jupiter and anointed by the sun, had cause to fear that he might be crucified, whereby his body would be washed by the rain, and drop by the heat of the sun. The dream of Vespasian was of harder exposition; as also that of the Emperor Mauritius, concerning his successor Phocas. And a man might have been hard put to it, to interpret the language of Aesculapius, when to a consumptive person he held forth his fingers; implying thereby that his cure lay in dates, from the homonomy of the Greek, which signifies dates and fingers.

We owe unto dreams that Galen was a physician, Dion an historian, and that the world hath seen some notable pieces of Cardan; yet, he that should order his affairs by dreams, or make the night a rule unto the day, might be ridiculously deluded; wherein Cicero is much to be pitied, who having excellently discoursed of the vanity of dreams, was yet undone by the flattery of his own, which urged him to apply himself unto Augustus.    

However dreams may be fallacious concerning outward events, yet may they be truly significant at home; and whereby we may more sensibly understand ourselves. Men act in sleep with some conformity unto their awaked senses; and consolations or discouragements may be drawn from dreams which intimately tell us ourselves. Luther was not like to fear a spirit in the night, when such an apparition would not terrify him in the day. Alexander would hardly have run away in the sharpest combats of sleep, nor Demosthenes have stood stoutly to it, who was scarce able to do it in his prepared senses. Persons of radical integrity will not easily be perverted in their dreams, nor noble minds do pitiful things in sleep. Crassus would have hardly been bountiful in a dream, whose fist was so close awake. But a man might have lived all his life upon the sleeping hand of Antonius.

There is an art to make dreams, as well as their interpretations; and physicians will tell us that some food makes turbulent, some gives quiet dreams. Cato, who doated upon cabbage, might find the crude effects thereof in his sleep; wherein the Egyptians might find some advantage by their superstitious abstinence from onions. Pythagoras might have calmer sleeps, if he totally abstained from beans. Even Daniel, the great interpreter of dreams, in his leguminous diet seems to have chosen no advantageous food for quiet sleeps, according to Grecian physic.

To add unto the delusion of dreams, the fantastical objects seem greater than they are; and being beheld in the vaporous state of sleep, enlarge their diameters unto us; whereby it may prove more easy to dream of giants than pigmies. Democritus might seldom dream of atoms, who so often thought of them. He almost might dream himself a bubble extending unto the eighth sphere. A little water makes a sea; a small puff of wind a tempest. A grain of sulphur kindled in the blood may make a flame like Aetna; and a small spark in the bowels of Olympias a lightning over all the chamber.

But, beside these innocent delusions, there is a sinful state of dreams. Death alone, not sleep, is able to put an end unto sin; and there may be a night-book of our iniquities; for beside the transgressions of the day, casuists will tell us of mortal sins in dreams, arising from evil precogitations; meanwhile human law regards not noctambulos; and if a night-walker should break his neck, or kill a man, takes no notice of it.

Dionysius was absurdly tyrannical to kill a man for dreaming that he had killed him; and really to take away his life, who had but fantastically taken away his. Lamia was ridiculously unjust to sue a young man for a reward, who had confessed that pleasure from her in a dream which she had denied unto his awaking senses: conceiving that she had merited somewhat from his fantastical fruition and shadow of herself. If there be such debts, we owe deeply unto sympathies; but the common spirit of the world must be ready in such arrearages.

If some have swooned, they may have also died in dreams, since death is but a confirmed swooning. Whether Plato died in a dream, as some deliver, he must rise again to inform us. That some have never dreamed is as improbable as that some have never laughed. That children dream not the first half-year; that men dream not in some countries, with many more, are unto me sick men's dreams; dreams out of the ivory gate, and visions before midnight.

c. 1650